Punjab FM says Cabinet stonewalling vital reforms

At his candid best, Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Badal on Wednesday regretted that he had not been able to have his way on a single issue. “With no sense of urgency, the state Cabinet has been persistently stonewalling all important decisions on finances, be it end to subsidies or resource mobilisation,” Badal today told The Indian Express.

While an amount of over Rs 4,000 crore tied to subsidies is still a sore point, his biggest regret is that health and education sectors are being deprived of the funds they deserve due to financial constraints. “The proposal on doing away with subsidies has been persistently put off despite promises of a relook. We have been successful in at least increasing the Annual Plan size and ensuring its 100 per cent implementation. Even this year’s Rs 6,200-crore plan will be implemented cent per cent and I would attempt to see that a state like Punjab has a plan size of over Rs 10,000 crore by the end of our Government’s tenure,” he adds.

His biggest sense of achievement comes from making a difference in the lives of people in his constituency, Giddabaha, and saving them from many diseases through clean drinking water. “When we started the reverse osmosis (RO) water purification programme there, people told us you can’t sell water, no one will pay. But people are paying and in the last six months the cases of jaundice in these villages have gone down from 100 to five per day,” he beams.