Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee President Capt Amarinder Singh today announced that the Congress government will provide wheat flour at the rate of Re 1 per kg to the poor,besides insuring the crops of farmers against any calamity natural or otherwise if voted to power. Addressing a public rally here,Singh said,under the proposed National Food Security Act,which has already been approved by the Union cabinet and is being introduced in the Parliament,the poor across the country will get flour (aata) for Re 1 per kg. It will be for far too less price than what Akalis are claiming to provide at Rs 4 per kg,he said. Even Rs 4 per kg aata was not provided by the Akalis of their own as it was government of India which is providing the state 10,000 tonnes of wheat every month for distributing among the people living below poverty line,he added. And what to speak of acknowledging it,they are claiming it to be their own, he remarked while taking on Bhatinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal who had allegedly said that both Amarinder and the Prime Minister had no right to speak on the Atta-Dal Scheme. He also took on the Badal Bahu on her claim that the SAD-BJP government had started 200 units of free power to poor and dalits. Why is she lying? Her government had given just 100 units while we have mentioned in our manifesto that we will give 200 units free, he said while adding that it was the Congress government which had started it and they (the Akalis) had stopped it.It was only at the fag-end of their tenure that they restored it. The PCC president also announced that the farmers crops will be automatically insured by the government against any calamity. He said,the existing system of ordering girdawris (revenue assessment) after any such calamity was time consuming and hardly yielded any results. Referring to SAD chief Sukhbir Badals claims of having done lot of development and an offer to show case it,Amarinder pointed out that he had been asking him for last six months to quote a single instance of development but he (Sukhbir) has not been able to as there was none. He also took a dig at the ruling combine for not being able to bring out a manifesto even when elections were just 10 days away. Asking Jagdarshan Kaur,the district president of Congress to ensure that a copy of our manifesto reaches the Badal house in Badal village so that Harsimrat Kaur can read it and stop speaking the lies, Capt said Akalis had no vision and no programme,which they could put in the manifesto and present to the people of Punjab. They might be finding it difficult as how to copy our manifesto so that it does not look like ours, he remarked.
