Punjab's freebies to woo voters disastrous for state's economy: Govt officials

Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann met the Prime Minister in March and during the meeting he sought special financial assistance as the state had accumulated loans over ₹3 lakh crore.

Updated on: Aug 13, 2022, 18:31:13 IST

By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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Welfare of the people is the prime aim of all governments – both at the Union of states -- but offering freebies such as free electricity and water without assessing the state’s revenue position and putting a burden on fragile utilities are freebies to woo voters, a top Union government functionary said citing an example of the new government in Punjab that made several such promises and now asking the Centre for the additional fund.

After offering a slew of freebies, Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann is asking the Centre for additional funds.

“Within days of winning election in Punjab, its CM met the Prime Minister and the Union finance minister and sought ₹1 lakh crore package so that he would be able to fulfil the poll promises his party (Aam Aadmi Party) made during the assembly polls. You made a promise without any basis! It will be certainly disastrous for the states’ economy,” the official said while reacting to AAP’s argument over welfare schemes.

Responsible politics and prudent governance require political parties to first make adequate provisioning in the budget before announcing schemes such as free electricity for the welfare of subsistence farmers or small-scale industries rather than announcing freebies to only woo voters and put the financial burden on gencos and discoms, another official said.

Newly elected Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann met the Prime Minister in March and during the meeting he sought special financial assistance as the state had accumulated loans over ₹3 lakh crore. Before elections, his party had promised sops such as free 300 units of electricity per month to every household despite the states have huge arrears to be paid to power utilities, the official said.

According to the official, there is no justification for political parties offering freebies that the government’s exchequer cannot afford and will eventually lead to bankruptcy of the state. “When they promise free electricity, water or other freebies, they are merely borrowing from future generations to reward present ones,” the official said.

Commenting on the AAP’s accusation that in 75 years since Independence, first time, wheat and rice are being taxed, the official said: “It is unbelievable, brazen and total white lies.” Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had also spoken about it in the Parliament during the recently-concluded Monsoon session that in the pre-GST regime, states were collecting significant revenue from foodgrains.

It is surprising that the representative present at the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council meeting in Chandigarh did not raise any objections on these tax-related proposals to this during the GST Council meeting. “The matter was discussed for almost 20 months, neither he raised any sort of objection when the Fitment Committee came with its report, nor he registered his objection at the GoM [group of ministers] deliberating the matter,” the official said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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