Lok Sabha election: Farmers, drugs figure in Punjab Democratic Alliance’s common minimum programme
The alliance has also pledged support to demand for complete loan waiver to farmers and agricultural workers, and implementation of the recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission.
The Punjab Democratic Alliance (PDA) on Saturday announced the common minimum programme (CMP) for the Lok Sabha polls. The PDA comprises Sukhpal Khaira’s Punjabi Ekta Party, Bains Brothers’ Lok Insaaf Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Patiala MP Dharamvir Gandhi’s Punjab Manch, CPI and Revolution Marxist Party of India.
The key issues taken up in the PDA’s common programme include revision of the concurrent list of centre-state relations, fighting for the Punjab’s ownership of waters and control of the head-works as per the Riparian principles and Article 262 of the Constitution, restoring the status of Punjabi language, Punjabi speaking areas and claim over capital Chandigarh.
Addressing a press conference here, PDA leaders Sukhpal Khaira and Simarjeet Singh Bains said the PDA gives an alternative to different sections of society in Punjab, including farmers, labourers, Dalits, backward castes, and small traders, who are suffering due to policies of successive governments at the state and the Centre.
The alliance has also pledged support to demand for complete loan waiver to farmers and agricultural workers, and implementation of the recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission.
The common programme also underlines making employment as a fundamental right. To address the problem, the PDA will make efforts to make agriculture profitable, develop industries in urban areas, eliminate contractual system on the basis of the principle of equal pay for equal work and encourage self-employment.
Emphasising the need to have a rethink on the NDPS Act. “Thousands of drug addicts are in jails while the drug lords are wandering free because they enjoy political patronage. Jails are overcrowded and have become dens of crime. The alliance demands to consider addicts as patients and extend them free medical treatment, and deal firmly with the drug mafia,” reads the common programme.
The alliance has also promised enacting laws so that land can be allotted to Dalits for houses from the common village land, and, in case there was no common land, the government should acquire the same.
Jassi Jasraj to be PDA candidate from Sangrur
The PDA has named Punjabi singer Jassi Jasraj as its candidate from Sangrur Lok Sabha seat against AAP state president Bhagwant Mann.
Jassi had contested the 2014 assembly polls from Bathinda as a AAP candidate and bagged 87,000 votes. The party later announced Jassi’s suspension, which was revoked ahead of the 2017 assembly polls. In January this year, he again quit the AAP.
