RS: He is CM and he thinks that you will be the next Finance Minister and that will help the govt and the economy will improvise. Commenting on this, Amarinder Singh wondered if you have got the machine for printing currency notes so that you could resolve economic problems of Punjab.
AJ: See, I will have no machine for printing notes. And I'm not aware of what responsibility I'll get. I can't even say whether I'll get any responsibility at all. But I want to say one thing. The first three Akali-BJP governments were dismissed using Art 356. What kind of attitude was this towards a state govt. You won't allow them to complete 5 years. After that, you discriminated against the govt as if opposition governments don't even exist. If NDA govt is formed under Modi ji's leadership then I'll work for Punjab getting all its rights.
RS: Arun Ji, you are taking a tough responsibility. The debt on Punjab govt has crossed 1 lakh crore. You are talking about development of Amritsar. In last 7 years, around 18,700 industries have closed down. How will new investments come? How will new jobs be created?
AJ: I'll tell you. This is one sided data. Tell me, what is the debt on central government? Is there any government in this country that is not under debt? And debt is given to a state that has creditworthiness. A bankrupt govt never gets any debt. Congress governments in states also get debt. So the opposition always makes allegations of state governments running on debt. It's their propaganda. Don't take them seriously.
Second, is the economic environment of the country being controlled by Punjab govt? Who raised the interest rates to 14 percent from 7 percent, which was during Vajpayee govt's time that made the industry unviable? Who is responsible for shutting down coal mines that resulted in electricity rates getting hiked by 1.5 times? If you will make the coal and electricity dearer and increase the tax rates, squeeze the state govts so that they could also increase tax rates, how will things improve. I'm of the opinion that we should have lower tax rates. Until and unless we make India a low cost manufacturing hubs, industries will keep closing down and this will happen across states.
RS: These things sound good but the fact is that debt is increasing on states and industries are closing down but the reports suggest that the number of hotels belonging to Badal family is increasing.
AJ: Rajat ji, you got things investigated. You got trials done. Captain Saheb won only one election and that was in 2002. Otherwise he is a serial loser. In the only election that he won, he had said that half of Australia belongs to Prakash Singh Badal. And they couldn't prove anything, not even 1 inch of land. Just because your channel has got bigger or Arun jaitley's assets have increased does not mean that it has been done through wrong means. If a person's business is running well then it's good. He is not earning through politics. He is earning by running hotels. Somebody is earning by running institutions or news channels. Otherwise everybody will become a full time politicians with no source of income and start earning from politics.
