Punjab will never stop free power to farmers: Badal

Free power supply to farmers in Punjab will never be stopped, Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal asserted Monday.

Talking to media in the state's Tarn Taran district, 280 km from here, Badal said that free-of-cost power supply to farmers has become their "life line" and would go on.

"There will be no break to ongoing free power supply to state's peasantry and this exercise will continue. Besides, the state would soon provide tubewell connections on priority basis to farmers having less than five acres of agricultural land," he said.

The Punjab government has been giving power supply free of cost to farmers in the state for a number of years.

Farmers, who constitute a sizeable portion of the state's population, do not have to pay electricity bills for the power supplied and used for agricultural activities. The state government has to spend several hundreds of crores of rupees annually to subsidise the free power supply.

The Green Revolution state, Punjab alone supplies over 60 percent of the food grain to the national kitty despite having only 1.54 percent of the country's geographical area.

--Indo-Asian News Service

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