Chandigarh/Amritsar, Sep 26 Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini on Saturday asked the AAP government in Punjab to issue a white paper on how many youths were provided employment in five years.
Providing employment to youth was not merely an electoral promise but an issue linked to their future and the economic security of their families, he said as he asked the Bhagwant Mann government to give a clear answer to the people on the issue of employment.
The Aam Aadmi Party had promised to provide employment to 20 lakh youths in Punjab, he said.
Addressing workers at a programme organised in Amritsar, Saini said the Congress had also promised employment in every household in Punjab, while the Aam Aadmi Party had also made similar promises.
However, the question before the people today is what the actual outcome of these promises has been, Saini said. He demanded that the Punjab government make the employment figures public.
During the approximately 18-month tenure of the present government in Haryana, around 45,000 youths had been provided government jobs without ‘parchi and kharchi’ (without favouritism/bribe).
Saini said the recruitment process for around 5,600 posts in the Haryana Police is underway, while recruitment and interview processes for around 8,000 other departmental posts are also in progress.
He said the government’s endeavour is to ensure that youth do not have to approach any political person or middleman for employment.
The CM said the Haryana government is working towards fulfilling the 270 ‘sankalps’ (pledges) made during the Assembly elections. Of these, 70 have already been fulfilled, while work on the remaining ‘sankalps’ is progressing rapidly, he said.
He said the government has not confined its commitments to announcements but is making efforts to implement them in a time-bound manner.
He said an allocation of Rs 5,000 crore had been made for women in the first year’s budget and an amount of more than Rs 2,000 crore had been directly transferred into their accounts.
Similarly, around 1.60 lakh families had been provided houses under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana and handed over the keys to their homes.
Comparing the economies of Haryana and Punjab, Saini said that Haryana’s real economic growth rate was estimated at 9.5 per cent in 2025-26, while Punjab’s growth rate was 6.1 per cent. Thus, there is a difference of 3.4 percentage points in the growth rates of the two states. That is, Haryana is progressing 3.4 per cent faster than Punjab.
He said that in 2026-27, Haryana’s economy is estimated to be around Rs 15.18 lakh crore, while Punjab’s economy is estimated to be around Rs 9.81 lakh crore. There is a difference of around Rs 5.38 lakh crore in the economic size of the two states, he said.
This difference reflects a difference in policies, leadership and accountability, he claimed.
Saini said that in 2023-24, Haryana’s share in the country’s GDP was around 3.6 per cent, while Punjab’s share was around 2.4 per cent. During the same period, Haryana’s per capita income was estimated at 176.8 per cent of the national average, while Punjab’s was estimated at 106.7 per cent.
He said that at one time, Punjab’s per capita income used to be nearly twice the national average. He said Punjab today faces the question of why the state has not maintained the expected pace of economic progress despite its potential in agriculture, industry, trade and its youth.
(PTI News)
