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Chandigarh, Nov 4 (IANS) Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Punjab Assembly and veteran Congress leader Pratap Singh Bajwa on Tuesday criticized Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, accusing him of betraying the trust of the women of the state through repeated lies and hollow promises regarding the Rs 1,000 per month financial assistance scheme announced ahead of the 2022 assembly elections.
Bajwa said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) came to power riding on the hopes of millions of women who had believed Mann’s promise of direct financial assistance.
“Three years later, that promise has been buried under excuses and false assurances. Every time the women remind the Chief Minister of his commitment, he sidesteps the issue with some pretext or the other,” the Leader of Opposition said in a statement.
The veteran Congress leader said that during the Tarn Taran Assembly by-election campaign, women once again sought answers from Chief Minister Mann, but were given another empty assurance that the scheme would now be implemented in the budget session of 2026-27.
Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, CM Mann also tried to sweeten his deception by announcing that the monthly amount will be Rs 1,100 instead of Rs 1,000.
He confidently announced that the scheme would be implemented immediately after the elections.
Bajwa said, however, the state budget for 2025-26 came and went without a single mention of this so-called flagship scheme.
Describing the promise as a “classic case of political betrayal”, the Leader of Opposition said the Mann government has cruelly misled the women of Punjab by exploiting their hopes for electoral gains.
Bajwa said, “If the chief minister really intends to fulfill his long-pending promise in 2026-27, he will also have to pay the dues to women till 2022 – the year he promised to launch the scheme immediately after forming the AAP government in Punjab.”
He said that repeated postponement of the scheme exposes the hollow governance and false propaganda of the AAP government.
Bajwa said, “The women of Punjab will not forgive a government that used their empowerment as a campaign slogan and then conveniently forgot them after gaining power.”
–IANS
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