An advocate practising in the Punjab and Haryana High Court has served legal notice to Amarinder Singh-led Congress government in Punjab against its decision of distributing free smartphones to youths.
According to advocate HC Arora said that he had come to know that the Punjab government was going to distribute smartphones from next financial year beginning from 1 April, 2018 as the ruling Congress party in its election manifesto for the Assembly Elections, 2017, had promised to distribute free smartphones to the youths.
The state of Punjab has to distribute around 50 Lakh smartphones to the youths.
Punjab government was reeling under financial crunch, and to distribute lakhs of free smartphones was nothing but cruel joke on the tax payers.
Merely because the ruling Congress had made a promise in its election manifesto, such a promise could not be permitted to be used as pretence for wasting the public funds, he added.
In his notice to CM, Arora said that instead of distributing 50 Lakh smartphones to the unemployed youth at the state expense, the application fee for applying for jobs which was otherwise payable, should be completely waived.
It would result into considerable relief to the unemployed youth, who have to pay such application fee for several recruitments to the recruitment boards, agencies, Punjab Public Service Commission (PPSC) etc, in search of a job.
“In case, the state government still goes ahead with its plan to distribute smartphones at state expense, or in case I do not receive any response to this notice within a period of fifteen days from Saturday (3 March), in that event, I will be left with no other alternative except to approach the High Court by filing a public interest litigation for scraping such scheme,” he said.