AAP govt betrayed paddy farmers on ₹2500 cash incentive: LoP Bajwa

The AAP government is in power for more than 7 months and are quite well aware of the stubble burning issue in the state but haven’t been able to come up with practical solution: Bajwa

Leader of Opposition (LoP) Partap Singh Bajwa on Sunday condemned the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government for betraying the paddy growers in Punjab on ₹2,500 cash incentive, which was announced to stop them from burning the paddy stubble. In a statement, Bajwa said that due to the AAP’s failure to keep its promise, the paddy growers are forced to burn the residue which has deteriorated the Air Quality Index in major cities of Punjab. “The state has crossed 12,000 cases of stubble burning with above 8000 cases taking place last week. The AQI in some major cities including Ludhiana, Amritsar, Jalandhar Patiala, Bathinda, and Chandigarh has reached from moderate to poor,” he said.

Bajwa reminded Kejriwal about his Punjab election manifesto in which he claimed to provide incentives to farmers to avoid the burning of paddy straw. (HT file photo)

The Congress leader said the AAP government is in power for more than seven months and they are quite well aware of the stubble burning issue in the state, even so, they have not been able to come up with a practical solution. He said that it was the AAP government, which had proposed to give ₹2,500 per acre to paddy growers, suggesting that the Centre would contribute ₹1,500 per acre while ₹1,000 per acre will be provided by the Punjab and Delhi governments. “Since the Centre Government has rejected the AAP’s proposal to provide ₹1500, it is the Bhagwant Mann-led AAP government’s responsibility to pay ₹2,500 per acre to paddy farmers. The farmers burn the paddy straw not out of choice, but out of compulsion. Therefore, without any financial assistance from the government, farmers find it very difficult to deal with the situation,” he said.

Bajwa reminded Kejriwal about his Punjab election manifesto in which he claimed to provide incentives to farmers to avoid the burning of paddy straw. He questioned (Punjab CM) Bhagwant Mann and (Delhi CM) Arvind Kejriwal for washing their hands off from their earlier promise of providing ₹2,500 per acre incentive to farmers for not burning the crop residue. “The AAP (Advertisement, Announcement, and Publicity) government should have compromised on the advertisement budget for the sake of the environment in Punjab,” he said.