Chandigarh, Aug 7 (IANS): Punjab Congress led by its chief Amrinder Singh Raja Warring on Monday held a protest outside the Deputy Commissioner’s office in Mansa to demand financial aid for the flood-affected people of the state.
Lambasting the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government for its 'incompetence' and 'mismanagement' that intensified the floods in the state, Warring said during the Congress rule, the party allocated hundreds of crores of rupees for the management, cleaning and repair of drainage systems and canals before the monsoon season to reduce the impact of incessant downpour.
“Now the government is hell-bent on wasting the funds for self-promotion and other PR activities,” he said.
Echoing the same lines, Kapurthala MLA Rana Gurjit Singh said that it was a man-made disaster.
“The ignorant and incompetent APP leadership deliberately overlooked the catastrophe that was coming. Had they held meetings in January or February with the local administrations and officials concerned to assess the preparedness before the monsoon, spent money on the management and repair of canals and drainage systems, the impact could have been reduced,” he said.
Expressing his disappointment over the way the AAP government ‘mishandled’ the floods that wreaked havoc in the state, Warring said, “I travelled extensively in the state and interacted with people in the flood-hit areas.
"All the flood-hit people had one common complaint that the government they had voted for in the name of ‘badlaav’ turned a blind eye towards their problems and left them on their own during the crisis.”
Criticising the government, former Cabinet minister Vijay Inder Singla said that AAP has utterly failed to rescue the flood-affected people.
It was shameful that while the people of the state were facing hardships due to incessant rains and floods, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and his ministers were making misleading statements that ‘everything is under control’, Singla said.
Warring said the party leadership has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, submitted memorandums to the Governor and urged the Chief Minister to announce financial aid at the earliest.