Union Minister of Textiles Giriraj Singh has blamed the Punjab government for not favouring the textile industry in Ludhiana as it has no favourable policy for it.

Addressing media in Ludhiana today, the Minister said that it is a sad state that the Punjab refused to take benefit of the PM MITRA scheme that aims to establish integrated, large-scale textile parks with world-class infrastructure to strengthen the Indian textile industry and boost its global competitiveness. He said the Centre wanted to give this scheme to Punjab for Ludhiana based textile industry with Rs. 1000 crore initial investment. This could have generated 1 lakh additional employment, but it seems the state government want to uproot textile industry from here.    

He also raised the issue of illegal conversion. He alleged that this is being done under the very nose of the Punjab government. Quoting unverified reports, the Minister said that in the last 3 years, over 2 lakh people, especially from poor strata, have been converted to other religion. He said the state government has failed to fulfil the promises made by it for increasing MSP, financial assistance to females and others.