Form panel to revive agriculture: Badal to Centre

Terming the hike in Minimum Support Price (MSP) of paddy as "too inadequate" to bail out farmers from agrarian crisis, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today requested the Centre to constitute an expert group to make agriculture a remunerative preposition.
The expert group must suggest ways and means to ensure that farming was made a profitable venture, he said, and called for implementation of recommendations made by renowned farm economist M S Swaminathan.
Badal, while interacting with reporters on sidelines of a Sangat Darshan programme at Rajasansi here, asked people to exercise restraint and observe the anniversary of operation Blue Star on June 6 peacefully.

He added the Punjab government was committed to maintain peace, communal harmony and brotherhood in the state.
He said the government was keeping a strict vigil over the situation and every effort would be made to maintain law and order in the state.
"No one will be allowed to disturb the hard earned peace in the state at any cost," he added.

To a query, Badal said the state police was already probing the attack on Sikh preacher Sant Ranjit Sikh Dhadriawala for which an SIT has been constituted and rejected need for investigation by any other agency.
Exhorting people to be prepared for "struggle to save water" during his address in village Padheri, Shahura and Bacchiwind, he alleged that the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) were inimical to the interests of Punjab and were hell bent upon depriving the state from its water.

Training guns on both Congress and AAP, Badal said while Congress had signed various water agreements to deprive the state of its waters, AAP was trying its level best to ensure that these agreements were implemented at the earliest.
AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal hails from Haryana so he was naturally inclined towards safeguarding the interests of his state, Badal claimed.
He claimed that the AAP government has submitted an
affidavit on the Sutlej Yamuna Link Canal (SYL) issue in Delhi which states that the "Punjab government's stand on this issue would disintegrate the country".
Badal said Punjabis could never forgive Congress for its "sins against Punjab" and slammed it for "irrelevantly" meddling in the social, political, economic and religious affairs of the state.

He alleged that the previous Congress governments at the Centre had deliberately denied the state of Punjabi speaking areas, its capital Chandigarh and even its legitimate share in river waters.
"How can any true Punjabi forget and forgive Operation Blue Star and the killing of innocents in 1984 anti-Sikh carnage," said Badal.