Amarinder accuses badal of Rs 12,000-cr CCL misappropriation

Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh today accused Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal of trying to hush up the "misappropriation" in Rs 12,000 crore Cash Credit Limit (CCL) meant for food grains procurement in the state.
Also, blaming Badal for the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal construction, he said the Akali leader has "no moral authority" to question Congress over the issue.
"Badal has no moral authority to blame the Congress for SYL as it was he (Badal) who had accepted Rs 2 crore from his Haryana counterpart, Devi Lal in 1978 for the construction of SYL canal, by giving precedence to personal relations over Punjab's interests as he considered Devi Lal to be his 'elder brother'," he alleged.

Amarinder alleged that "it is not the first time that Badal misappropriated money meant for procurement as during his previous tenure between 1997 and 2002 too he had done the same thing and misappropriated Rs 4,700 crore in a similar manner."
"As they say 'old habits die hard', Badal had repeated the same thing by misappropriating the CCL money, most probably in Sangat Darshan programmes, which means the new government will inherit a deficit of Rs 12,000 crore once again," he claimed.
He disclosed that in 2002 when he took over as the Punjab chief minister, his government inherited a CCL deficit of Rs 4,700 crore from the Akali government.

He said he had to give personal guarantee to then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to ensure that the deficit is cleared, before further CCL was released.

"When we demitted office in 2007 there was zero deficit," he said.
Reacting to Badal's charge that Congress was responsible for SYL, Amarinder reminded him that it was the Congress government which in 2004 had repealed all previous water sharing agreements by enacting a law that legally relieved the state of its obligation to construct SYL and "saved Punjab's precious water".
He accused Badal of "playing with the emotions of people by exploiting them" and pointed out how he delayed sending the Vidhan Sabha resolution to the Governor for his assent during the last session.