Conspiracy watch: Islamabad trying to ruin Punjab, ministers warn

Imran Khan berated for his criticism of PML-N leadership.

LAHORE:

Law Minister Rana Sanaullah and Agriculture Minister Ahmad Ali Aulakh on Sunday lashed out at the federal government for its failure to provide urea and alleged that the Punjab was being discriminated against in terms of the amount of electric and gas load shedding.

Sanaullah also berated Imran Khan, calling him a puppet. The ministers held their press conference at the chief minister’s office. Sanaullah blamed Senior Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi for the delay in import of fertiliser which he said was hurting Punjab’s farmers and could cost them billions of rupees. He accused Elahi of hatching conspiracies against the Punjab.

He said the federal government was too busy protecting the corrupt that it had no time for any public welfare project.

Aulakh said that the flawed policies of the federal government and its failure to import fertiliser had created a crisis in the Punjab. The scarcity of fertiliser, he said, had had a negative impact on the production of crops. He added that there was a threat of a loss of billions of rupees to the agricultural sector.

Aulakh said that even though a number of letters had been sent to the prime minster and the federal government regarding the unavailability of urea and the increase in its price, the situation remained the same.

The ministers said the federal government was responsible for providing fertilisers, pesticides and agriculture implements but it had failed to take timely measures. They said that 75 to 80 per cent of agricultural produce came from Punjab but the provincial government had not been taken into confidence regarding evolving agricultural policies and neither had its recommendations been incorporated.

They said the federal government had not been able to devise a mechanism to fix the price of urea and its price continued increasing. The price of urea, they said, should be written on the bag so that profiteering could be checked.

The ministers said that Punjab needed 2.4 million tons fertiliser for the Rabi crop. They added that due to the 20 per cent reduction in the supply of gas to fertiliser plants from Sui and the 12 per cent reduction in Mari gas, Punjab was facing a serious shortage of urea.

They said that in accordance with the recommendations of the committee headed by Sirdar Zulfiqar Ali Khan Khosa, a request had been made to the federal government to provide gas to these factories or make arrangements for the timely import of fertilisers but the proposal was not heeded.

They said that while the factories had started raising the price of urea due to the shortage of gas, the federal government had also imposed a 16 per cent RGST on agriculture inputs due to which the official price of a bag of urea had reached Rs1380, while in December 2010, a urea bag had cost Rs850.

They said that due to the shortage, even higher prices were being charged in the market. They said that the Punjab government had registered 227 FIRs against 877 dealers involved in overcharging on urea by April 2011 and recovered Rs5.6 million in fines.

Sananullah also said that intelligence agencies had planted Imran Khan to criticise PML-N’s leadership. He said that his future would be like Air Marshal Asghar Khan. He said that the establishment should revisit its policy in terms of ‘planting’ Imran Khan in politics.

He said that if Khan continued to work for charity then he would be successful in establishing a few more hospitals. He said that politics was not his strength and he was being manipulated like a puppet.

He said that President Asif Ali Zardari and Elahi were both corrupt.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 25^th,  2011.