Manpreet gets BJP backing on subsidy issue
Free power to be reviewed, hints Kalia
Jangveer Singh
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 13
Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal may be isolated in the SAD on the subject of subsidies but as far as the BJP is concerned he is not only talking sense but his view is in consistency with the saffron party’s stand on the issue.

The Finance Minister, while talking to TNS yesterday, had claimed that the SAD-BJP coalition government had committed a “huge political miscalculation” by not reviewing its policy on subsidies. He had also said that populist policies do not pay and that the people were aware and ready to give credit for development work even if it saw the light of day after years together like in the case of thermal plants.

Local Bodies Minister Manoranjan Kalia, who is part of a two-member committee whose report on resource mobilisation is overdue, told TNS that the BJP had also voiced the same thoughts to its alliance partner at several meetings. “We had called for full service and full charge” while referring to agricultural power supply. He said, however, the alliance government did not agree to review the free power supply facility given to farmers.

Kalia said the issue had, however, been opened again as necessity demanded it. “We feel now is the right opportunity to do it (review free supply). Let us do it”, he said while giving an indication that the facility was going to the reviewed. He also disclosed that the resource mobilisation report of the two-member committee would be submitted within this month.

BJP president Rajinder Bhandari ,when questioned, said though he could not comment on Manpreet’s statement as it was a matter of collective responsibility, the coalition partners must discuss all issues, including free power, with an open mind. “We cannot make any issue a holy cow and should be ready to take bold steps if needed with the only parameter being the interest of the state”.

Veteran BJP leader and former Minister Balramji Dass Tandon was more candid on the issue. Narrating the sequence of events at a meeting held in 2007 on the issue of free power, he said even then Manpreet Badal had clearly detailed that going along with subsidies would prove suicidal for the state. “Manpreet even advocated that the coalition government could put the blame on him in case there was a political backlash due to non-extension to the free power facility to farmers”, Tandon added.

The BJP leader said, “We urged the SAD not to play the vote bank card but our pleas were not heard”. He said the PSEB had run up a profit when the free power facility was withdrawn during the earlier Congress regime and that the spiralling cost of providing the facility was telling on government finances with the subsidy cost going up from Rs 2,000 crore in 2007 to Rs 2,600 crore in 2008 to Rs 3,100 crore in 2009.