Former Haryana Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition Bhupinder Singh Hooda on Thursday said the state government’s decision to abolish three per cent reservation in sports quota will also have to be withdrawn.

Addressing a Press conference in Jind today, Hooda said sportspersons are disappointed with the Haryana government’s decision to abolish the quota of players in class one, two and three government jobs. “This decision will cause a big loss to both the game and the sportspersons,” he said, adding that over 750 players got appointments because of his government’s ‘Medal Lao-Pad Pao’ sports policy.

Meanwhile, the Leader of Opposition said the Congress will fight the coming civic polls on the party symbol.Expressing concern over the rising prices of petrol-diesel and domestic gas, Hooda said people who were already suffering before inflation, were outraged by yet another anti-people decision of the government.

“Rising inflation has broken the back of the common poor and middle class including farmers and laborers. We demand immediate withdrawal of the increased prices of petrol, diesel, gas cylinders. The Haryana government should at least reduce the rate of VAT to give relief to the public from inflation,” he said.

“Today, every section of the society is unhappy with this government. farmers, labourers, employees, small traders, unemployed have been disappointed with the government. Haryana has the highest unemployment, record inflation, economic slowdown, the common man has been the hit the hardest,” Hooda added.

Hooda said that the government employees in the state are agitating on the streets demanding old pension, but the government is ignoring them, and the issue of old pension was also raised in the assembly.

“The Haryana government should implement the old pension scheme on the lines of the Congress government of Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, considering the demand of the employees. If the present government will not implement the old pension, then we will implement the old pension as soon as our government is formed,” he promised.

Referring to unemployment, he said youth of the state are seeing a dark future for themselves, due to the record unemployment in Haryana. The domicile rules have been changed to bring down the requirement from 15 years to five years for 75 per cent reservation in the private sector. We have already said that the five-year domicile rule is not in the interest of the native Haryanavi,” he said.