Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee President Capt Amarinder Singh today said his party was against undue concessions being planned by the state government for the Bathinda refinery at a time when the project was nearing completion,It smacks of the biggest-ever scam perpetrated in the history of Punjab and simply amounts to loot of the state exchequer, he said. We are not against the refinery as it was its (Congress) brainchild only. It was conceptualised and approved in principle in 1995,when HS Brar was the Chief Minister. Site selection,acquisition of land papers and infrastructure linkage plans were drawn up and a letter of intent was issued during the remaining tenure of the Congress government. So,our stand was not against setting up of the refinery in Bathinda but the undue concessions will be undone after the elections, Amarinder said while interacting with mediapersons at the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) office here today. The concessions were too massive and these were not commensurate with what the state was getting in return. The refinery will at best generate 800 direct jobs and certainly not 30,000 as claimed by the government. As to the downstream recruitment,it is still in the air and no facts and figures have been given as to how jobs would be generated. Providing VAT exemption for 15 years,amounting to Rs 20,000 crore,to the refinery is absolutely unjustified and unacceptable. Referring to the role of the Akali-BJP government between 1997 and 2002,Capt Amarinder Singh said,It did nothing more than signing an MoU to implement the project. There,too,contrary to the agreement with HPCL that the government of Punjab will not make any financial investment in the project and will also not offer any tax cuts,this government agreed to waive off sales tax on the refinerys products for a period of 15 years involving a revenue loss of Rs 20,000 crore to the state.
