LUDHIANA: Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) President Sukhbir Singh Badal on Tuesday said all development work has come to a halt in Punjab with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government directing all departments to deposit funds lying with them into the state treasury.
Terming the decision to return funds from state departments as unprecedented, while talking to the media here, the SAD chief said 12 government departments, including Agriculture, Technical Education, Revenue, Information Technology, Food and Civil Supplies, Animal Husbandry, Water Resources, Taxation, Public Works and Mandi Board have been intimated.
Explaining the issue, Badal said the AAP government had recently sought to borrow Rs 47, 076 crore under the open market borrowing (OMB) limit, but the Union government imposed a cut of Rs 16, 676 crore due to extensive loans being taken by the state in the last three years, as well as poor financial management.
“Since the AAP government has overextended itself and does not have funds to manage borrowings, it has called back on funds released to 12 departments, " he said.
This effectively means that the government will be using funds meant for development as well as various government schemes to pay its loans, he added.
Asserting that the AAP government had bankrupted Punjab, Badal said Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann owed an explanation to Punjabis as to where Rs one lakh crore taken by way of loan in the last three years had been spent.
“The government has nothing to show by way of infrastructure development or any new scheme or project. It is clear that a large portion of these funds have been embezzled and transferred to the AAP high command, besides hundreds of crores being spent on advertisements every year, ” he said.
Badal demanded a thorough probe into this embezzlement and financial mismanagement by an independent agency, besides demanding that the fund recall directive be withdrawn.