Chandigarh, Jun 20 (PTI) Nine Punjab ministers and four Congress MPs Sunday backed the state government's decision to provide jobs to sons of two sitting legislators on "compassionate grounds", even though the move has been criticised by some leaders within the party.

In a joint statement issued from the Congress office, the supporting ministers and MPs lashed out at the critics, also including opposition SAD and AAP, for allegedly failing to appreciate the state policy which they claimed has been in force for many years now.

The state government, they said, have been giving appointments to the families of terror incident victims, the kin of martyred defence and paramilitary personnel, rape victims, the families of 1984 riot victims, other government employees who die in harness and the families of police personnel killed on duty.

The state ministers who backed the government decision are: Rana Gurmeet Singh Sodhi, Sadhu Singh Dharamsot, Vijay Inder Singla, Aruna Chaudhary, Sunder Sham Arora, Gurpreet Singh Kangar, Balbir Singh Sidhu, O P Soni, Bharat Bhushan Ashu.

They were joined by MPs Gurjeet Singh Aujla, Ravneet Singh Bittu, Jasbir Singh Dimpa and Mohammad Sadiq.

They said the state government has also assured a job to the family of each farmer who died during the protest against the central farm laws.

The leaders emphatically said if other similarly placed people are regularly given benefits under the state policy, it would be unfair to discriminate against the children of MLAs simply because their fathers are currently holding such positions.

"Even in the past, the government has not discriminated on the basis of social standing or economic well-being of families while extending such benefits," they said in the statement.

Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had Saturday defended the decision to appoint Arjun Pratap Singh Bajwa as an inspector in Punjab Police and Bhisham Pandey as a naib tehsildar in the state's Revenue Department on the "compassionate" ground.

Bajwa and Pandey are sons of Qadian MLA Fateh Jung Singh Bajwa and Ludhiana legislator Rakesh Pandey.

After the opposition from SAD and AAP, Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar and two party MLAs had on Saturday raised questions over their own government's decision of giving jobs to sons of two legislators and urged the chief minister to rollback this "ill-advised" move.

Besides Jakhar, Congress legislators Kuljit Nagra, Amrinder Singh Raja Warring and Pargat Singh also expressed displeasure over the government decision.

In a cabinet meeting on Friday, five ministers -- Sukhjinder Randhawa, Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa, Razia Sultana, Charanjit Singh Channi and Sukhbinder Sarkaria -- were also learnt to have also opposed this move.

(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)