SAD govt has failed on all fronts: Bhattal

RAJPURA, Feb 9: Former Punjab chief minister and senior Congress leader Rajinder Kaur Bhattal today said that the SAD-BJP government had ...

RAJPURA, Feb 9: Former Punjab chief minister and senior Congress leader Rajinder Kaur Bhattal today said that the SAD-BJP government had failed on all fronts, which had fostered a feeling of disenchantment among the people.

Talking to mediapersons, Bhattal said that the very issues on which the Akali Dal had come to power was now being ignored by it. These included merger of the left out Punjabi-speaking areas with Punjab and the settlement of dispute on the sharing of river waters. The government was merely concentrating on keeping the party together, in view of the increasing factionalism, she said.

She said that the important issues, including development, democracy and peace, to which the Beant Singh government had given top priority, had been relegated to the background and that the people of the state were feeling let down.

Bhattal said that the Congress had fought a hard battle against terrorism and that the Congressmen had made heroic sacrifices during militancy in Punjab. Now the situation in the state was similar to that prevailing during the early 808217;s, wherein the peace and communal amity was endangered.

She called upon all secular parties to rise above petty interests and to help thwart the designs to disturb peace.

Bhattal had arrived to attend the bhog ceremony of the mother of former minister of state for Finance and Planning Raj Khurana. Several senior leaders, including MLAS Avtar Singh Brar and Chaudhary Santokh Singh, Local Bodies Minister Balramji Dass Tandon, Congress leaders Brijlal Goyal and Prem Gupta, Patiala District Urban Congress president Ved Parkash Gupta, District Rural Congress president Hardial Singh Kamboj, and president of the Faridkot Congress Committee S. K. Gupta were among those who attended the function.