PUNJAB Pradesh Beopar Mandal condemns statement of Anil Joshi

Ludhiana, July 31, 2013: Punjab Pradesh Beopar Mandal (PPBM) has strongly condemned the statement issued by Minister for Industry and Technical Education, Punjab Anil Joshi against it yesterday.

Joshi on Tuesday had addressed functions here, in which he had asked the traders not to come into the trap of organisations like Beopar Mandal because these orgaisations’ motive was to puzzle the issues and not to resolve them. He had alleged that Beopar Mandals had their vested interests. further, he had stated that the issue of e-TRIP could be sorted out by sitting amicably and not by coming on roads to protest.

Addressing a meeting of the district unit of the Mandal, the PPBM state general secretary Sunil Mehra and state secretary Mohinder Aggarwal said that the minister had even tried to prove as if Beopar Mandal leaders were agents of the Congress party. They said they could not expect such a statement from an “educated” person like Joshi.

Both the Beopar Mandal leaders said at the time of elections Joshi alongwith BJP’s senior leader Navjot Singh Sidhu, MP, had visited Beopar Mandal leaders asking for votes. They said Beopar Mandal was matured enough as it was much “elder” than Joshi, adding the former was 75 years old where Joshi was 47 years old. They said Beopar Mandal was a non-political organisation, which had always struggled for cause of the traders’ community.

Further, Mehra and Aggarwal said even BJP state unit’s trade cell and state BJP’s core committee too had opposed the implementation of e-TRIP. They asked whether these two bodies too were also agents of the Congress party. They feared Joshi was following the footsteps of the Congress leader Digvijay Singh who had been rendering loss to the Congress party by issuing statements in the media. Likewise, Joshi had been damaging BJP with his statements in Punjab, they said. They said they would pray to God to give intelligence of Joshi, so that he could understand difference between correct and incorrect.

The PPBM leaders warned that they had decided to support candidates of those political parties only in next parliamentary elections which would be supportive for cause of the traders’ community. They said they would not even hesitate to oppose and work for defeat of the candidates who would be found working against the interests of traders’ community.

They further said Joshi had making "unwanted" statements against Beopar Mandal whereas he himself had been failing in providing any concrete policy for the trade and industry in the state. They said due to the faulty industrial policy of the state, around 50 induction furnace units had already been closed in Punjab, even all the major industrial units were preferring expansion of its units in other states such as Bihar, MP and Gujarat.