Chandigarh, April 7 (IANS) Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) President Sukhbir Badal on Tuesday said the party would chart out a programme to help distressed farmers whose standing crop had been damaged across 1.25 lakh acres as they had been completely abandoned by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab.

Addressing a rally in Budhlada town as part of the party’s Punjab Bachao campaign, the SAD President said, “We are making a programme to provide wheat as well as green and dry fodder to affected farmers.”

He said the modalities of the entire exercise would be finalised at a meeting of the party’s district presidents and halka in-charges in Chandigarh on Wednesday.

Asserting that Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had forsaken the farmers, he said they were yet to get compensation for the destruction of their paddy crop in floods last year.

“Now, even after unseasonal rain and hailstorms have flattened wheat crop across 1.25 lakh acres, they have not been given any immediate compensation even though they were promised by the Aam Aadmi Party.”

He said, despite this, AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal was lying in Gujarat that the AAP government had given compensation at the rate of Rs 50,000 per acre to Punjab farmers within one month of the floods last year. Badal said the lies of AAP and CM Mann knew no bounds.

“Even though it is clear that incidents of sacrilege started in Punjab after AAP entered the state in 2014, the Chief Minister today claimed that I am responsible for committing sacrileges. If this is so, then why does he not register a case against me?” he asked.

Badal also spoke on how AAP and the Congress had got together in a desperate bid to stop the SAD’s storm in the state.

He said Punjab Congress President Raja Amarinder Singh Warring was also speaking the Chief Minister’s language.

The SAD President also announced that a hospital of the stature of AIIMS would be opened in Mansa beside a veterinary college.

He said all link roads would be re-laid and that roads would be made to link all ‘dhanis’.

He also announced that streets and drains in all 12,500 villages of the state would be laid with concrete, and it would be ensured that every family had a ‘pucca’ home.

Speaking on the occasion, Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal spoke on how the erstwhile SAD government had spent Rs 800 crore for irrigation projects in Budhlada alone.

She said the AAP government had repeatedly failed to give compensation to farmers, be it for floods, bollworm attacks or hailstorms.

–IANS

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