Chandigarh: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will visit flood-affected areas in Punjab on Monday. He will land in Amritsar on a chartered flight in the morning and will take a return flight on the same plane from Pathankot after visiting flood-affected areas in border districts, an official said. As per his schedule, the Raebareli MP is set to go to flood-affected Ghonewal, Ajnala, Gurchak, and Makoura before heading to Pathankot.
Punjab Congress president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring said Gandhi had always batted for the interests of farmers, raising their issues and slamming the BJP-led Centre govt for favouring corporates. “Now that floodwaters have receded, it is an appropriate time for him (Rahul Gandhi) to have a first-person account of the damage suffered by farmers. He will meet flood-affected farmers and people, and his visit is expected to force the govt to give immediate and adequate relief to farmers,” Warring said.
Warring reiterated that the Rs 1,600-crore financial assistance announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to Punjab was “peanuts” and that “so far not even a rupee has been given from the promised amount”. Leader of opposition and Congress MLA from Qadian, Partap Singh Bajwa, too said the visit was expected to force both govts, in the state and at the Centre, to “take the rehabilitation of flood-affected people seriously”. “We would request him (Rahul Gandhi) to take up the matter with the PM and tell him to rethink the relief amount as it is meagre. We would also urge him to get clarity from the PM on disaster funds as the PM said Rs 12,000 crore was lying with Punjab, the state govt said it received Rs 1m500 crore, and the CAG report mentioned that by March 31, 2023, Punjab had Rs ,9041 crore in disaster funds,” Bajwa said.
He added Gandhi would visit flood-affected areas in assembly constituencies of Dera Baba Nanak, Ajnala, and Dinanagar.
Union minister of state for railways and food processing industries Ravneet Bittu, in a post in Punjabi, took a dig at Rahul Gandhi’s recent foreign visit. “When the elections for Vice-President were happening, you were busy enjoying your holidays. And when Punjab was drowning and people were crying, you were living it up in Malaysia!” In an apparent reference to the Congress leader’s scheduled visit to Punjab on Monday, Bittu said in the post, “These visits don’t seem to be about alleviating people’s pain but rather for staging political drama.”
Bittu to Gandhi: ‘What breed of horse are you?’
Union minister of state for railways and food processing industries Ravneet Bittu termed visit “political drama”. In a post on X, Bittu said, “It is said that Rahul Gandhi ji is coming to Punjab! Rahul often says that Congress has all kinds of horses – racehorses, wedding horses, even lame horses. But Rahul ji, can you or your party leaders, especially the leaders of Punjab, tell the people what breed of horse you are?”
Courtesy : TOI
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