Chandigarh, Mar 17 (PTI) A day after the Congress government in the state highlighted its achievements on the completion of three years in office, the SAD in a scathing attack on Tuesday dubbed the party rule as the period of betrayal marked by the neglect of people.

The opposition party on Tuesday also dared Chief Minister Amarinder Singh to name "a single development project or welfare scheme" started by his government while accusing him of "cheating" farmers on debt waiver.

The party alleged that the CM betrayed the youth in the name of jobs, cellphones and Rs 2,500 unemployment allowance.

The Congress government on Monday had held a press conference to highlight its achievements to mark the completion of three years of its rule in the state.

"This is a period when the people of Punjab got nothing except betrayal, indifference and neglect at the hands of a power-drunk and arrogant ruler who humiliated Punjabis, treating even meeting people below his royal dignity," Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Badal alleged.

Attacking the chief minister for being "inaccessible", the SAD president asked how many times Amarinder Singh toured the state and enquired about people's problems.          He said in the past three years of the Congress rule, the state remained "headless" with "no government visible" either in the civil secretariat or in villages, towns and cities.

He alleged that the Congress government had "not fulfilled" any promise made to people.

Badal further alleged that the Congress Party was "squarely responsible for the desecration of religious texts" in Punjab.

He alleged that the incidents of the desecration of religious texts were a "part of a deep-rooted conspiracy to defame" the then SAD BJP government ahead of the 2017 assembly elections.

"Subsequent events have provided categorical and convincing evidence of the Congress hand in the conspiracy. The version of the key witness Surjit Singh (in the 2015 Behbal Kalan police firing incident at Faridkot) unnerved the Congress government as they knew that this would lead the trail to their house," Badal alleged.

"That is why they brazenly and shamelessly tried to destroy the evidence by putting pressure on the key witnesses to change his version, leading to his death under psychological stress," he said.

Responding to the criticism, the Punjab CM hit back at Badal, ridiculing him for his "atrocious lies" that reflected his "total frustration".

Over the sacrilege issue, the CM described the accusations as "bundle of lies".          "Has Sukhbir forgotten that it was he and his family who were at the helm of the government when religious texts were being burnt and torn in Punjab? Has he forgotten that he was the home minister of the state when innocent people were fired upon in Behbal Kalan and Kotkapura," the CM asked.

Taking on the SAD chief over his criticism of development and welfare programmes undertaken by his government in the past three years, the CM said Sukhbir Badal was "hiding behind outrageous lies" after betraying and neglecting people for 10 years.

"Your government did not deliver on even 10 per cent of its promises in 10 years, while we have completely or partially fulfilled more than 75 per cent of our promises in just three years," said the CM in a statement here.

The CM pointed out that he had personally given out figures and data to prove every claim and achievement of his government while the Akalis had failed to highlight even one major accomplishment of their decade-long rule.

The CM said the people of Punjab were neither interested nor cared about from where the government was operating.

All they were interested in was seeing work happening on the ground, which was more than visible to them and which was the reason they continued to repose confidence in the Congress election after election in Punjab, he said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)