CHANDIGARH, March 31: The third budget session of the Punjab Assembly under the Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party Government which concluded yesterday, will be marked by two factors: it betrayed the acute factionalism rocking both the ruling Akali Dal and the Opposition Congress and reflected the determination of the government to mop up resources to tide over the fiscal crisis.Besides the political crisis, Punjab has been facing fiscal crisis for the last few months and the budget was an exercise by Finance Minister Capt. Kanwaljit Singh to administer the bitter pill to raise additional resources and cut down non-plan expenditure.The parting of ways between Chief Minister and Akali Dal President Parkash Singh Badal and party stalwart and former Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee President Gurcharan Singh Tohra cast its shadow on the session with Tohra loyalists registering their dissent by staging walk-outs, and that too to protest against some budget proposals. It is a different matter that they were hopelessly outnumbered.The effort was to give out signals and embarrass the Chief Minister. The religio-political crisis has entered another phase with Jagir Kaur taking over as the SGPC President in place of Tohra. It was for the first time that the crisis got reflected in the Akali Dal Legislature Party and that too, during the budget session.Apart from the Tohra loyalists, BJP MLA Luxmi Kanta Chawla also performed the role of opposition leader and staged several walk-outs, including on the issue of attitude of Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal. She raised issues which directly concerned the people.Former Chief Minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal seemed yet to reconcile herself to the change in her role as Leader of the Congress Legislature Party. Chaudhary Jagjit Singh had been appointed in her place after Amarinder Singh took over as the Pradesh Congress President. This budget session has drawn the battlelines in the Pradesh Congress. Bhattal entered the House only once during the entire session and set the tone for the factional fight.It was her decision to boycott the rest of the budget session against anti-poor and anti-employee tone of the budget which caused tremors in the Congress. As Leader of the Opposition, she has been articulate and forceful. Now it is Avtar Singh Brar who is trying to overshadow Chaudhary Jagjit Singh and he did it on the very first day during the Governor's Address.Amarinder Singh has complained to Congress President Sonia Gandhi against the unilateral action by Bhattal. The Bhattal lobby in the PPCC has now been activated.The House hailed the elevation of one of its members, Jagir Kaur, as the SGPC chief. All these years, the SGPC chief has been the major power centre in Sikh polity. It was the SGPC which created the Akali Dal.Though the Governor's Address which outlined the policy framework of the party in power, was lackluster and directionless, the Finance Minister's speech addressed some of the issues, including the crisis in the farm sector. The reported cases of suicides by the farmers and the corrective measures find mention in the Finance Minister's speech. The corrective measures, besides diversification in agriculture, include providing insurance cover to the farmers, creating a provident fund for farmers for non-crop related requirements, crop insurance, direct payment of cooperative loans and fixing of limits on cooperative loans.Apart from redressing the crisis in the farm sector, reference has also been made to the imbalance with a large section of the population without adequate purchasing power even for sufficient food, thus creating artificial surplus. It is imperative to evolve a national policy of nutrition that ensures food entitlement to every citizen. In a veiled attack on the Congress, it has been pointed out that the system of centralised planning which was followed for almost 50 years, has failed to provide the economically weaker sections of the country with adequate purchasing power.It is not without reason that Capt. Kanwaljit Singh stressed the need for total decentralisation of power and responsibility.
