Punjab school closure extended to September 3; CM seeks release of Rs 60,000 crore from Centre

CHANDIGARH: The Punjab government has extended the closure of all schools until September 3. Highlighting Punjab's plight due to one of the worst flood disasters in decades, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Sunday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and urged him to release Rs 60,000 crore of the "state's funds", which he claimed are "stuck" with the Centre.

The state government has extended the closure of all schools until September 3. Previously, the government declared holidays for the schools from August 27 to 30. The Patiala district administration has asked people not to go near the banks of the Ghaggar and Tangri rivers in the wake of the rains.

In the letter to PM Modi, Mann stated that Punjab was currently grappling with one of the worst flood disasters in decades, impacting about 1,000 villages and lakhs of people, and said he wanted to pay at least Rs 50,000 per acre to affected farmers. The CM said at present, about three lakh acres of farmland, primarily paddy fields, remain submerged under floodwater, leading to devastating crop losses just weeks before harvest.

"In addition, there has been a widespread loss of livestock, which is severely impacting rural households whose livelihoods are heavily dependent on dairy and animal husbandry," he said. Giving details about the alleged funds stuck with the Centre, Mann said the state has lost an estimated revenue of Rs 49,727 crore due to the transition from VAT to the GST regime. "No compensation has been provided by the government of India" for this, he alleged.

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"Loss on account of reduction of RDF (rural development fund) and MDF (mandi development fund) in the last few years has ballooned to over Rs 8,000 crore," the Punjab CM said. Mann also pointed out that the Centre scrapped the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) projects in Punjab recently, amounting to Rs 828 crore. "This can adversely impact the state's rural connectivity in the long run," he wrote.

"You are requested to release all funds of Punjab stuck with the Government of India, which is to the tune of Rs 60,000 crore," he said. Punjab is facing massive floods, caused by the swollen Sutlej, Beas and Ravi rivers and seasonal rivulets due to heavy rain in their catchment areas in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.

On Sunday, the overnight rains led to flooding in some villages in Hoshiarpur district, while the Kapurthala district administration issued an alert, appealing to people in the Sultanpur Lodhi area to move to safer places in view of the further increase in water level in the Beas river because of continuous rains in the upper hilly areas, said officials.