Sanjeev Singh Bariana
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, September 19
With chief ministerial tenure of less than six months before Punjab goes to the polls early next year, it will not be easy going for Congress leader Charanjit Channi for he wears a crown of thorns of unfulfilled promises and inner-party wranglings.
Discontent evident
If the youth got employment then the dissatisfaction wouldn’t have been so publicly visible. The common man knows the reality and the results will show. A senior Congress leader
While his predecessor Capt Amarinder Singh has issued a long list of achievements on poll promises during his tenure, the public perception on ground presents a different picture.
His hometown Patiala has remained the hub of protests by employees from different segments, including linesmen, transport department and school teachers, during his tenure. For the past over three years, employee unions, mainly teachers, have been protesting in front of the Education Minister’s residence. Captain Amarinder also faced strong reaction from farmers recently, when he asked them to clear their protests from all 113 places in Punjab and instead shift to Haryana and Delhi.
People are also not too happy with the tall government claims of providing more than 19 lakh jobs under the “ghar ghar rozgar” scheme.
A senior Congress leader said the common man was aware of the reality that most of the jobs in this category were only on paper. “If the youth of the state got so much of employment then the dissatisfaction wouldn’t have been so publicly visible. The common man knows the reality and the results will show,” he says.
The government has been making claims of filing 10 challans, charge-sheeting 24, suspending 15 police personnel and arresting 10 civilians in connection with the sacrilege incidents. However, there are no clear answers to getting the ‘real culprit’ to book or how the incidents were orchestrated. Underlining that the state government cannot cancel all power purchase agreements (PPAs) merely on public outcry, the government, however, hasn’t been able to satisfy the public outcry against alleged massive payments to power plants during the season when these were not in use. Elevation of Channi to the post of the CLP leader is not going to end the rumblings within the dissatisfied Congress cadre, feel senior leaders.
Satisfying voters with results on unfulfilled promises is not going to be easy for Channi before the next elections are announced.
Unkept promises challenge for Charanjit Singh Channi
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