With Pb polls approaching, Oppn steps up attack on govt

Jalandhar: With barely a few months to go for the Assembly elections in Punjab, the opposition has stepped up its attack on the AAP government on various fronts. The government has, in recent weeks, also faced protests on various issues from contractual workers, sanitation workers and power department employees.

The opposition leaders have alleged that in four-and-a-half years, the AAP government pushed every department in Punjab into crisis and claimed that employees across sectors were now protesting on the streets. The opposition parties have also turned up the heat on the AAP government, alleging multiple exam paper leaks in the past four-and-a-half years following the detection of a cheating racket in the pharmacy officers’ recruitment exam recently. Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, however, has stood his ground, claiming that not even a single exam paper was leaked in the state during AAP’s tenure.

Punjab Assembly elections are scheduled to be held early next year. Last week, markets and commercial establishments remained shut at many places in Punjab following a day-long state-level ‘bandh’ call by sanitation workers against the Barnala lathi-charge incident. On July 22, police resorted to lathi-charge at sanitation workers after they allegedly hurled stones and garbage bags at the police in Barnala in an alleged attempt to thwart a cleanliness drive undertaken by the local municipal corporation and district authorities.

Sanitation workers in Barnala had been on strike since July 8 in support of their various demands, including regular job contracts for outsourced staff, restoration of old pension scheme and a salary increase. Last month, the Punjab Roadways, Punbus and PRTC Contract Workers’ Union accused the AAP government of not accepting their demands despite discussing them in around 70 meetings in the past four years.