Loan delay raises CM's heckles

CHANDIGARH: Put off with the inordinate delay by the World Bank in sanctioning development loans to Punjab, chief minister Amarinder Singh said he could not abjure "the electoral compulsions and would not desist from making power free for farmers once again even if it was against the liking of the World Bank".
The World Bank had withdrawn Rs 1,200-crore loan in 1997 for development works after the Badal government had announced free power and irrigation water to farmers.
The chief minister said on Monday that despite massive administrative and economic reforms undertaken by the state government, the World Bank had taken too long to sanction development loans.
In a recent interaction with a senior official of the World Bank, he said, "It was assured that Rs 1,600-crore loan for public health was in the pipeline, but we cannot wait forever for it to materialise."
"Besides reforms, we have to take care of our electoral politics as well," the chief minister said, adding that his government was all set to restore free electricity to farmers once the Punjab State Electricity Board improved its financial balance-sheet.
Amarinder said the financial position of the PSEB had considerably improved. The board that was running into annual losses of Rs 1,800 crore had registered a profit of Rs 240 crore last year.
"If the situation continued to improve,we will make power free for farmers, may be after a year or two," he said, making it clear that it might happen close to the next Vidhan Sabha elections.
Regarding the electoral prospects of his party, Amarinder said the Congress was sure to win both the by-elections.
Saying that by-elections in Kapurthala and Garhshankar would be a vindication of the policies that his government had been following, he asserted that his government had kept all the promises made in the election manifesto, besides providing an efficient procurement system to farmers and enacting a law on the SYL canal.