Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal on Sunday blamed the successive Congress governments at the Centre for its staggering debt. He said that financial injustice has been meted out to Punjab by the successive Congress governments at the Union level.
Addressing a gathering on Sunday, the chief minister said that despite the enormous contribution of the state in making the country surplus in food production, the successive Central governments have meted out step-motherly treatment to Punjab. Mr Badal said that it was the irony of fate that the diligent farmers of the state, who were feeding the whole country by filling the national food pool, were themselves reeling under the debt of more then `32,000 crores. He further said that the worst thing was that the state has been deprived of its legitimate share in revenue collection due to which its overall development has suffered adversely.
Lashing out at the Central government, the chief minister said that the Union government frame policies to deliberately exclude the state from getting its benefits.
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‘Divisive politics threat to assam’
MANOJ ANAND
Guwahati, May 27
The bad governance and divisive politics of the successive Central and the state governments was posing a serious threat to the territorial integrity of Assam.
This is what has been claimed by former special director of Intelligence Bureau R.N. Ravi, who also warned that the way dissension was growing among various ethnic groups, further division of Assam can’t be ruled out. Mr Ravi, who is regarded as one of the experts on complex socio-political scenario of the Northeast in the home ministry, said that Assam is the most heterogeneous state of the country where hundreds of tribes live in.
Advocating the need of an inclusive politics to handle the complex scenario of the state, Mr Ravi regretted that the attempt of giving political and administrative entity to some ethnic groups by forming councils has done a great damage to the state. Pointing out that giving council to some community or the other has widen the division among hundreds of ethnic residents of the state, Mr Ravi said, “The population of Bodos in the Bodoland Territorial Council area is only 30 per cent but the government decided to form the autonomous council for Bodos.”