SAD, Congress hold separate meetings to discuss plans ahead of Lok Sabha polls

The Congress and the Akali Dal Saturday held separate meetings here discussing preparations for the Lok Sabha polls. Having already launched the 'Mission 13' campaign, Punjab Congress leaders, including party affairs in-charge Asha Kumari and state unit chief Sunil Jakhar, held a meeting here to discuss party's preparations on four Lok Sabha seats of Bathinda, Anandpur Sahib, Hoshiarpur and Ferozepur.

Punjab has total 13 Lok Sabha seats. Out of these, four seats each are held by the Akali Dal, AAP and the Congress while one is with the BJP. The Congress leaders held discussions with MLAs (representing assembly seats falling in four Lok Sabha seats), former MLAs, district presidents, block presidents and other officer bearers.

"We discussed party's preparations and strategy in the meetings for the Lok Sabha polls," Jakhar told reporters here. Party office-bearers also gave their suggestions and feedback to the state party leadership on four parliamentary seats, he said.

The Akali Dal also held a meeting here to seek views of different employees' unions for preparing an election manifesto for the polls. The meeting was chaired by Rajya Sabha MP Balwinder Singh Bhunder.

Representatives of the different employees' unions sought that all recruitment to the government jobs should be on merit and regularised, and the system of hiring employees on contract or through contractors, ad-hoc or temporary basis should be abandoned. They claimed that these systems have resulted in gross disparities in salaries and allied service conditions for instance ad-hoc teachers or doctors get even less than one third of the regular teachers /doctors for the same work.

The representatives demanded that all the ad-hoc or temporary employees working for the last three years should be regularised immediately. The manifesto committee will also interact with the representatives of industry, business, farmers' groups, trade unions and all other stakeholders to know their aspirations from the next Union government, a SAD leader said.

(With inputs from agencies.)