A day after Amarinder Singh government launched its much-awaited farm debt waiver scheme, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Monday said it’s a fraud with the Punjab farmers who were promised total farm loan waiver by the ruling Congress.

Addressing a Press conference, SAD president and former Punjab deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal said with the partial crop loan waiver launched on Sunday, the Chief Minister (CM) Amarinder Singh had defrauded the entire farming community.

“This is the same man who promised Rs 90,000 crore waiver encompassing all loans be it from nationalised and cooperative banks or from private money lenders. Now he has delivered an Rs 167 Crore relief which gives an average relief of Rs 35,000 each to 47,000 farmers,” he said in direct contrast the SAD-BJP government headed by former CM Parkash Singh Badal had given a relief of Rs 65,000 crore over 15 years by introducing free power for agriculture tubewells.

“This amounted to a relief of Rs 80,000 to Rs One lakh for each farmer annually. This is not all. We gave a relief of Rs 642 Crore to cotton farmers for single crop damage. We increased the per acre compensation from Rs 2,000 to Rs 8,000. We also gave an interest free working capital limit of Rs one lakh to farmers,” the Akali leader said.

The SAD president also announced that the party’s core committee would take a decision on the next course of action on the issue of fraud played on the farming community by the Congress government on January 12. “We will also meet the Punjab Governor on the same day and demand dismissal of the State government for betraying the farmers of the State”.

On the issue of sacrilege, the SAD president dared the Punjab government to ask a sitting judge of the Supreme Court to inquire into all cases of sacrilege Guru Granth Sahib in the state. He said similarly a sitting judge of the apex court could also inquire into all alleged false cases during the tenure of the SAD-BJP as well as during the last ten months of the Congress government, particularly those in the home town of Pradesh Congress president, Sunil Jakhar. He said known Congressman and CM’s crony Justice (retd) Mehtab Singh Gill was heading the Commission set up for looking into false cases registered during the past decade of the SAD-BJP government.