Chandigarh, March 27: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has expressed anguish over the preceding governments’ failure to take on the rising incidents of deaths due to farm distress and the youth dying of drug over dose.
AAP MLA and party’s Punjab Kisan Wing chief Kultar Singh Sandhwan and Talwandi Sabo MLA Prof Baljinder Kaur on Tuesday said that if official figures were to be believed, the state was passing through a critical phase with the over stressed farmers, already in debt trap, were shoved into taking the extreme step due to apathetic attitude of the government, peddling rosy dreams of a complete loan waiver, only to backtrack on the promise, leaving the hassled farmers to fend for themselves. He said the government should, taking a cue from the Delhi government, should implement the recommendations of Justice Swaminathan Commission to address the farm distress.
The AAP leader said that the government in the saddle, like the previous Akali Dal government, had failed on all fronts, be it creating enough job opportunities under the ‘ghar ghar naukari’, addressing the issues and concerns of farmers, stamping out the menace of drugs, which had proved to be a mere ‘jhumla’ as nothing came about out of the narrative, they said.
Speaking about the menace of drugs, the AAP leader accused the former Akali Dal government of shoving the youth into drugs by offering a protective cover to the drug lords. He further said that it was the Akali Dal government which had introduced the cult of ‘mafia raj’ in the state. Even the ruling Congress government had done nothing to check the open dance of death due to its laxity.
Professor Baljinder Kaur said that the pace at which deaths due to drug overdose by the youths were taking place had sounded a clarion for the deaf dispensation. She said what was worrying was that the zombie drugs had spread its fangs over the younger girls both in the urban and rural packets of the state for which the governments were to be held solely responsible, citing a recent example of a 13-year-old girl from Rama Mandi in Bathinda district who was allegedly shoved into drugs by her seniors.
Expressing their serious concerns over the upsurge in such cases, Kaur said that the situation was for more alarming in the border districts of Gurdaspur, Ferozepore and Tarn Taran, where three youths had recently died of drug over doze.
She demanded that the Captain Amarinder Singh government should come out of its cozy confines and redeem its pledge to eliminate the menace of drugs (under oath) within weeks of assuming power in the state. She said if the government failed to stop the dance of death, AAP would go the whole hog to press it to break its slumber over the issue.
