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Congress slams Punjab budget as bundle of lies, warns of debt trap
Raja Warring, Partap Singh Bajwa term ₹1,000 women’s stipend politically timed gimmick; point to ₹4.17 lakh crore debt as proof of AAP’s fiscal failure.
Punjab Congress leaders on Sunday launched a scathing attack on the Bhagwant Mann-led AAP government’s budget, describing it as a wrap-up of lies and a desperate attempt at headline-management that ignores the state’s fiscal reality.
Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring and leader of the opposition (LoP) Partap Singh Bajwa both slammed the long-awaited announcement of a ₹1,000 monthly stipend for women, labelling it “too little, too late”.
They argued that since the AAP swept the 2022 assembly elections on this guarantee, women are entitled to four years of arrears amounting to ₹48,000 each. Warring likened the move to a “post-dated cheque” with no clear commencement date, while Bajwa questioned why the “fulfilled guarantee” took four years to materialise if the government’s intent was sincere.
Both leaders raised the alarm over Punjab’s spiralling debt, which has surged from approximately ₹2.84 lakh crore when the AAP took office to nearly ₹4.17 lakh crore. Warring pointed out that the total debt now stands at a staggering 160% of the ₹2.6 lakh crore budget, warning that the state is being pushed toward bankruptcy without any roadmap for recovery.
Bajwa criticised the budget for its lack of vision regarding industrial revival and employment, noting that “hollow investment claims” have failed to translate into results on the ground. He asserted that the document reflects a government obsessed with political optics rather than addressing the state’s grim realities of crime, drugs, and economic stagnation.
Dismissing the fiscal plan as a document of rhetoric, the Congress leaders expressed apprehension that the new stipend would suffer the same fate as the ₹10 lakh health insurance scheme—lost in clerical red tape. They concluded that the AAP government is likely to spend more on “advertising the announcement” than on the actual welfare of Punjab’s citizens, prioritising publicity over long-term economic reform at the fag end of its term.
