Cong backs Mandi Gobindgarh industrialists’ stir

Thursday, 16/10/2014

http://epaper.dailypostindia.com/Details.aspx?id=116766&boxid=58211&uid=&dat=2014-10-16

Patiala : Former minister of state for external affairs and Patiala MLA Preneet Kaur has said that the Congress party would extend support to the agitation launched by Mandi Gobindgarh traders and industrialists against the state government, and the Congress leaders would participate in the dharnas being staged by the agitating traders to save the trade and industry.

Preneet was talking to mediapersons after she was briefed by MLA Sadhu Singh Dharamsot about the problems being faced by Gobindgarh traders, on Wednesday.

She said that the SAD-BJP government was bent upon ruining trade and industry in the state. Gobindgarh traders had been staging dharna for the last 28 days to save their business, but the government had turned a deaf ear and remained unmoved. She elaborated that with the shutdown of the industrial units, workers had been rendered jobless. The labourers were worried about their livelihood whereas the government had gone into a deep slumber.

She recalled that Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal had made a commitment with the traders that instead of doing it through e-trip system, the government will prefer to recover VAT on the basis of electricity consumption by each unit, but it had not been given effect.

During the last eight years of SAD-BJP rule, she mentioned that only 125 new industrial units were set up, whereas 18,770 units had been shut down as a result whereof more than 10 lakh people had been rendered jobless.

“With the wrong policies and authoritarian rule of the SAD-BJP government, it was not only the steel industry that had suffered, but more than 3,200 rice mills also stood closed,” she added.

She also alleged that the Excise and Taxation Department was openly extracting money from the traders under the garb of the e-trip system.

“The businessmen of Gobhindgarh wanted to pay tax in a respectful manner, but the government believed in extortion,” she said. She maintained that it was the duty of the state government to give due relief to the people, but it was the other way round where under the business establishments were being forced to be closed by imposing heavy penalties through e-trip system.

On one hand Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked of simplifying the taxation regime, but on the other, his alliance partner, the SAD, was making the system more complicated. The traders and industrialists wanted to pay tax, but the state administration believed in extortion which had led to public outcry.