He paid floral tributes to the statue of Karnail Singh and also honoured his widow Bibi Charanjit Kaur.
Chief minister Parkash Singh Badal lauded the role of Punjabis in freedom struggle as he commemorated the martyrdom day of Shaheed Master Karnail Singh Isru who laid down his life in Goa liberation movement.
At a state-level function organised at Isru, 45km from here, he said the contribution of Punjabis in the independence movement was immense despite they forming only a minor percentage of India's population.
Badal said it was Punjab which was consistently contributing about 45% of wheat and 25% of rice towards the Central Pool, "even though the Centre had never shown any sympathetic attitude towards our farmers".
He paid floral tributes to the statue of Karnail Singh and also honoured his widow Bibi Charanjit Kaur.
Badal announced that her pension would be enhanced from Rs3000 to Rs5000 per month after getting Cabinet approval. Badal said the government will maintain Karnail Singh's house.
Referring to the SAD-BJP government's programmes for the development of the state, he said that his ambition was to see Punjab as a power surplus state by 2012-13 and for this, government had sanctioned four thermal plants at Talwandi Sabo (1980mw), Goindwal Sahib (540mw), Rajpura (2100mw) and Gidderbaha (2680mw).
Work was in full swing on three thermal plants and fourth one at Gidderbaha was in the advanced stage of implementation.
He said the government had taken the lead to initiate an ambitious programme of cleaning of rivers Satluj, Beas and Ghaggar at a cost of Rs2054 crore to ensure that all the cities in Punjab have proper drainage and water supply.
Badal said, "If anyone asks me about my most important achievement of this tenure, I would certainly reply that it is the bringing back of the most prestigious project Guru Gobind Singh refinery to Punjab again, which had been dropped by my predecessor just by declaring it as a white elephant."
He said Mittal Group in collaboration with HPCL was setting up this refinery of about Rs19,000 crore, likely to be commissioned by 2011.
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