The decision to send 12 legislators on a trip to distilleries in Scotland while Punjab desperately grapples with an unprecedented flood situation has raised a huge storm with politicians of all hues crying foul over the “blatant abuse of authority and taxpayers’ money”.
The evidently privileged MLAs, including Vidhan Sabha Speaker Nirmal Singh Kahlon, who was recently chargesheeted by the Central Bureau of Investigation in a multi-crore recruitment scam, belong to the House Pollution Control Committee and ostensibly want to study pollution management technology employed by Scotch whisky manufacturers.
The curious excursion has been undertaken despite objections and the state finance department has reportedly refused to release advance funds for the group’s airfare and hotels while abroad.
But Speaker Kahlon and his friends, currently stated to be distillery-hopping without “officially” sampling any of the exquisite single malts or prized blends, have defended their decision to undertake the journey to Scotland on the basis of a somewhat controversial study that showed high levels of alcohol-related pollution up to a radius of 30 km around four major distilleries in Punjab.
Former chief minister Amarinder Singh claimed, “The Scotch trip is a scam and clearly a squandering of taxpayers’ money to give elected MLAs a paid holiday abroad.”
He pointed out that “the state’s own Pollution Control Board has already rejected the study that is being used to justify the visit.”
The ambitious tech transfer mission has also drawn criticism from leading environment activists. Balbir Singh Seechewal, who has devoted his life to cleaning Punjab’s most polluted waterways, says he cannot fathom how Scottish technology could help Punjab where the manufacturing processes, the raw materials and, most significantly, the climate, are completely different from that of Scotland.