After the People’s Party of Punjab (PPP) merged with the Indian National Congress (INC) on Friday in a bid to ‘save’ Punjab, party chief Manpreet Singh Badal revealed that Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi has accepted the 11-point memorandum submitted by him.
“I was the Finance Minister in the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) government in Punjab. I resigned because I disagreed with policies of the SAD government. PPP is on a movement to improve Punjab,” said Badal.
“In our meeting with Congress vice president (Rahul Gandhi), our agenda was on how to turn Punjab around. We gave an 11-point memorandum which was accepted by Rahul ji,” he added.
He further said that illiteracy and drug addiction needed to be tackled in the state.
“Punjab has fallen from being the jewel of India. INC is the right platform for our agenda, which is the growth of Punjab,” he added.
Badal had launched the PPP on March 27, 2011, lambasting both the Akalis and the Congress. He contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections on the Congress symbol from Bathinda but lost to the Shiromani Akali Dal’s Harsimrat Kaur Badal by nearly 20,000 votes in a very close contest.
The PPP, however, had failed to open its account in the 2012 assembly elections.
Manpreet had parted ways from the ruling Badals, resigning as the Punjab finance minister in the fag-end of 2010, when he said his voice of dissent on the state’s fiscal health was not rebutted within the Akali-BJP government.
