Give Chandigarh to Punjab: Akali MP

New Delhi, July 11

Noting that he was not asking for waiving Punjab’s whopping debt of Rs 30,000 crore to the state-run Food Corporation of India (FCI), SAD leader Naresh Gujral demanded that the Centre should “appoint an arbitrator to look into the issue” and its outcome should be acceptable to the parties concerned.

The SAD leader, while participating in a discussion over the Budget (General) for 2019-20, also made a suggestion that the Centre should give the surplus revenue generated by the Chandigarh administration to the Punjab Government till a political decision was arrived at making the UT the state capital.

Demanding that Chandigarh was the capital of Punjab and it should be returned to the state, Gujral said, “Ours is the only state apart from Haryana which does not have its own capital.”

He said the surplus revenue collected from the UT goes to the Centre and said, “The amount of money that has come to the Centre’s coffers since Punjab was divided if added up over the years plus the interest is more than the total debt on the state.”— TNS