Chandigarh, Feb 24 (PTI) Punjab Congress leader Partap Singh Bajwa on Monday attacked the AAP government over the issue of illegal mining and also said it failed to honour its "commitment" of generating Rs 20,000 crore per annum from the sand mining.

During the Zero Hour in the Punjab Assembly, Leader of Opposition Bajwa alleged that illegal mining is "rampant" in the state.

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He also said before the 2022 assembly polls, AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal had made a "commitment" that a sum of Rs 20,000 crore would be generated from sand mining every year in Punjab.

However, the government could manage to generate only Rs 288 crore per annum, he said on the first day of the two-day assembly session.

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"Illegal mining is taking place at a large scale in the entire Punjab. I appeal to the state government to tell how it will be stopped," he said.

"As per the commitment of Rs 20,000 crore per annum, the state should have received Rs 60,000 crore in three years but the state could get less than Rs 900 crore. So where is Rs 59,000 crore," he asked the treasury benches.

The Qadian MLA said that a case was registered against a stone crusher company allegedly involved in illegal mining in Anandpur Sahib recently, and alleged that the company belonged to a close relative of an AAP minister.

"The stone crusher had no electricity connection. It was running on a generator," he further claimed.

BJP legislator Ashwani Kumar expressed apprehension over the arrival of around 10,000 people in the last three years in the border district of Pathankot, seeking their police verification.

He claimed that with the coming of people from outside, the crime graph increased in Pathankot.

"Who are they? From which place they came? What is their background? The government should pay attention to it and get their police verification done," he said while reminding the House that Pathankot had already witnessed a terror attack.

Congress MLA Rana Gurjeet Singh said rural roads have got damaged at many places in the state because of overloading trucks carrying sand and gravel for constructing national highways.

"We have limited funds. We need to send a proposal to the National Highways Authority of India that they should recarpet rural roads which get damaged," he said.

Majitha MLA Ganieve Kaur also took up the issue of damaged link roads in her constituency.

Kaur, who is the wife of Akali leader Bikram Singh Majithia, demanded that these link roads should be repaired.

(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)