CHANDIGARH: Badal said on Wednesday that the Alkalis should field common candidates in all Vidhan Sabha segments for the coming Punjab poll.
His party would make serious efforts for consolidating the Akali votes as a split would be against the interests of the Panth and the crate Badal said.
Badal said he had been emphasizing unity for the past two years and what he had done to achieve the objective was known to all. He was ready even now for cooperation to forge Akali unity.
Badal also said that his supporters had been winning elections to various cooperative institutions in the state. About three fourths of the directors elected on Tuesday to the Punjab State Cooperative Supplies and Marketing Federation (MARKFED)} belonged to his party. The elected post of chairman of the state Mortgage and Land Development Bank, too, had been bagged by his party.
He demanded immediate election to panchayat and local bodies and said bureaucratization of these institutions had harmed people’s interests in rural and urban areas.
He was of the view that the country’s bankruptcy resulted from centralization of power which must be delegated. That was why his party had demanded autonomy to states to enable people to sort out their own economic and other problems. A time had come when India should be a federation of autonomous states.
Badal said the system of appointing bureaucrats as chairman cooperative bodies should be done away with. There should be one elected post of managing director for all such bodies.
He regretted that the in structure was crumbling because of a long spell of bureaucratic rule. Roads in the state, once known for one of the best surface communication system were broken. Not a single village in Punjab was getting filtered water for drinking.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 26, 1991
