Summary:
Ludhiana, Nov 30 (PTI) SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal is a businessman, out to snatch businesses of others, Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu alleged on Tuesday.
Sidhu hurled the allegation while addressing reporters here before attending a meeting of local Congress councillors, during which he also termed as “hollow” Badal’s various promises made to industrial and business houses on Sunday.
Accusing Badals of having monopolies in transport and cable businesses, Sidhu said, “Sardar Sukhbir is a businessman and he is here to do business and snatch others" businesses." Sidhu was addressing the media two days after Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal promised a slew of incentives, including a ministry for small industry and traders and a fifty per cent cut in external development charges, if the SAD-BSP alliance is voted to power in the 2022 Punjab assembly polls.
Accusing Badal of making all hollow promises to businessmen, Sidhu said, “Two-three days back, Akali Dal president came here and made hollow promises and said many things to the industry.” Targeting the previous Akali regime, Sidhu said an investment summit was held in 2015 and it was claimed that 391 memoranda of understandings worth Rs 1.20 lakh crore were signed.
But actually, only 46 MoUs out of 391 materialised and investments worth only Rs 6,650 crore -- less than five per cent of the proposed investment -- were made.
Comparing investment proposals during the Congress regime with that of the previous SAD-BJP government, Sidhu claimed that his party"s government had promised to bring Rs one lakh crore investment in the state and out of this, 52 per cent commercial production has already started.