Chandigarh, June 25 || Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) President Sukhbir Singh Badal on Friday said the farm economy of Punjab has been "endangered" by the Congress government, with massive power cuts and insufficient canal water threatening to devastate the paddy crop.
Talking to the media in Kharar town near here, Badal said even as the top Congress leadership was engaged in an internal feud with Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, the farmers of the state had been left to their fate.
He alleged that farmers were barely getting four to five hours of power and that too in gaps instead of the promised eight hour uninterrupted power supply. He said for the first time ever, even canal supply had been disrupted which threatened to result in the destruction of paddy crops over vast swathes in the Malwa region.
Badal said even as farmers were suffering, the Chief Minister was busy in keeping the Gandhi family happy and had accepted the directive of Rahul Gandhi to implicate the top SAD leadership in false cases.
"The new SIT (special investigation team) which was formed after the dismantling of the old one led by former IG Kunwar Vijay Pratap after it was indicted for conducting a politically motivated inquiry by the high court, is also now being run by the state Vigilance Department."
He said this was clear from the manner in which Vigilance officials were included in the SIT team in direct violation of the high court orders when the SIT questioned former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal at his Chandigarh residence.
"It is clear that Vigilance Director B.K. Uppal and Advisor B.I.S. Chahal, who works in conjunction with the former, are supervising the SIT probe."
The SAD President alleged Punjab had gone backwards during Congress rule with corruption and scams being the order of the day.
He announced that once the SAD formed a government in the state in 2022 it would order a probe into all scams and bring their perpetrators to book.