SAD-BJP to seek votes for development: Badal

Archit Watts

Tribune News Service

Muktsar, May 1

Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal said here today that development, along with peace and harmony, would be the main poll plank of the SAD-BJP alliance in the 2017 elections. He said development projects worth Rs 12,000 crore had been started in the state, adding that these would meet their deadlines.

Badal said Rs 6,000-crore projects had been initiated in cities and villages to provide basic amenities such as drinking water, sewerage, roads and streetlights.

During his sangat darshan programme, the CM today directed the officials concerned to install boards in all wards displaying the grants sanctioned for the development works, on the pattern of Lambi villages.

About the pre-poll survey conducted by a private agency hired by the SAD, Badal said he was never in favour of any survey. “The best survey is the election itself. We work for the entire five years and then seek votes from the public. If the public elects us, it means they liked us,” he said.

Kin of jobless linemen disrupt Sangat Darshan

The families of some unemployed linemen disrupted the CM’s sangat darshan programme on the Bathinda road here late in the evening. Gurbhajan Singh, a resident of Jalaleana village in Faridkot district, who was sitting close to Badal, stood up and requested him to recruit his son and others as linemen in the Power Department.

However, when Badal tried to go away without giving any assurance, the man removed his turban and tossed it at his feet. A few women accompanying him started raising slogans.

Some cops immediately overpowered them and took them to the police station. Though the man was immediately released, the women – Jasveer Kaur and Gurpreet Kaur from Faridkot, Amandeep Kaur and Santosh Rani from Kotkapura, and Fazilka’s Rani Devi, whose husband had committed suicide; — were taken into preventive custody.

Soma Singh Bharo, president, Unemployed Linemen Union, said, “We have lodged a protest on almost every occasion, but the state government is not willing to give us jobs.”