Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Sunday alleged that the Badal and Dhindsa families were stalling the work on a state-of-the-art government medical college at Mastuana Sahib here. He said the state government decided to construct the medical college at a cost of Rs 460 crore. Majority of the fund earmarked for the college has been released, Mann said, according to an official statement.
Referring to opposition leaders Sukhbir Singh Badal and Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, he accused the two families of “joining hands to stall work on Sangrur medical college for their vested political interests". The chief minister said the college was to commence its first academic session from March this year. The people of the entire Malwa region could have got the best medical facilities in the region.
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Mann said this medical college would have offered a lot of direct and indirect employment opportunities to the youth of the region, besides giving a major push to the overall development of the entire Malwa belt. He, however, alleged that the Badal and Dhindsa families "have sunk all their political differences just to stall this ambitious project".
"Both these affluent families have made concerted efforts to ensure that this project should not kick off by creating legal troubles," he said. The Badals have even misused the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) -- apex religious body of the Sikhs -- to get this project stalled so that the common people should continue to suffer, he alleged.
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The chief minister alleged that it is unfortunate that the SGPC is acting like a puppet in the hands of the Badal family and is being used by them "for fulfilling their nefarious political designs". "Badals or Dhindsas can do whatever they want, but this project will start at any cost," he said. Mann had laid the foundation stone of the college in August and announced that it will be functional from April 1, 2023.
However, after a controversy over the ownership of the land, no work has been carried out on it. Last month, a delegation of SGPC members and SAD leaders had bmitted a memorandum to the Sangrur Deputy Commissioner (DC), offering help to the government in the construction of the medical college at Mastuana Sahib. Former SGPC chief Gobind Singh Longowal had last month said that wrong information was being spread and the apex religious body of the Sikhs had never opposed construction of the medical college.
