Lashing out at the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) president and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Monday lamented that instead of allowing all channels to telecast gurbani, the latter was toeing the line set by “his masters” to give the rights only to one channel.
 
Notably, Mann, a day before, had questioned the rationale behind extending gurbani telecast rights from the Golden Temple, Amritsar, to only one channel, while proposing that the State Government would bear all expenditure to install hi-end techniques to telecast gurbani on all the channels “free of cost”.
 
Responding to the proposal, SGPC chief Harjinder Singh Dhami had asked the Chief Minister not to create an “unnecessary” controversy over the issue.
 
Mann, addressing the gathering after laying foundation stones for tehsil complexes at Dirba and Cheema in Sangrur district, asked the SGPC president Dhami whether spreading the message of gurbani or extending largesse to his favourite channel was more important. “What objections SGPC president has if the universal message of ‘Sarbat da Bhala’ (welfare of all) is disseminated through the ‘Sarb Sanji Gurbani’ across the globe,” he asked.
 
He also said that the SGPC president, “who seeks votes for the SAD in the Lok Sabha polls”, had no moral right to give sermons to him. “It is unfortunate that the SGPC is acting like a puppet in the hands of the Badal family and is being used by them for fulfilling their nefarious political designs,” the Chief Minister said. “The Badals have misused the SGPC to stall the ambitious medical college project at Mastuana Sahib, which could have transformed the fortunes of the people of the region,” he said.
 
Taking on the previous governments in Punjab, Mann said that they had sold government jobs, whereas the AAP Government had provided 29,000 jobs to the state’s youth in a transparent manner.
 
Mann also criticized the BJP-led Central Government for imposing a value cut on wheat. “Every single penny cut would be extracted from the Centre with interest,” he said, adding that filling the national food pool would not be possible without the state’s hard-working and resilient farmers.
 
The Chief Minister further said that the Centre was unnecessarily harassing the State by depriving it of legitimate funds. “Funds worth Rs 3,000 crore, under the Rural Development Fee (RDF), are still pending with the Centre. Also stalled was the state’s share of GST,” he said, adding that such poor decisions were souring the Centre-state relations.
 
Mann also announced that the State Government will soon launch a bus service for the girl students studying in the government schools. “The aim of this scheme is to facilitate the girl students for completing their studies in the government schools. This is a step forward towards ensuring best public transport for the girls across the State,” he added.
 
He added that the state government will soon start bus service to connect the villages in the state. “Besides facilitating the people from the villages to travel in the state, it will also help in providing employment opportunities to the youth. This will be another path breaking initiative of the state government towards the well-being of the general public,” he added.