Former union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal today said while former chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh had danced to the tunes of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for nearly five years, newly inducted chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi was following the same line by signing off policing in nearly half of Punjab to the centre.
Addressing the media here, Mrs Harsimrat Badal said “the cat is out of the bag. It is now clear that Capt Amarinder Singh was aligned with the BJP all along and backstabbed his own party as well as Punjabis. The reason why he helped in framing of the three hated agricultural laws and hid this from Punjabis for one and a half years also lies exposed. The cosy relationship which Capt Amarinder shared with the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also clear from the fact that despite being an opposition chief minister, the BJP never went after him like they did in the case of Mamta Bannerjee and others. The most the PM said about Capt Amarinder was that he was a ‘swatantar fauji’. Capt Amarinder’s statement yesterday that he would form his own party and align with the BJP is proof that the independent ‘fauji’ was always working in collusion with the BJP”.
Mrs Badal said chief minister Charanjit Channi was no less. She said Channi had backstabbed Punjabis by selling off the interests of the State to the centre. “Channi readily agreed to the extension of the jurisdiction of the Border Security Force (BSF) to a radius of fifty kilometers from the international border with Pakistan during his meeting with union home minister Amit Shah on October 5. Now our major shrines including Sri Darbar Sahab, Durgiana Mandir and Ram Teerath have come under central purview. So have ten districts of Punjab”. The former union minister said by doing this Channi had weakened the cause of federalism and created the ground for increased central control over Punjab.
She also made it clear that the oaths taken by Capt Amarinder Singh on the holy Gutka Sahab were used by the entire party including Channi to secure votes in 2017. “Now when people are questioning them for not fulfilling their promises they are beating them as was done by Bhoa legislator Joginder Pal. Congressmen should beware of behaving like this because the people could then also react in a similar manner”.
When queried about the killing of a labourer accused of sacrilege at the Singhu border by Nihangs, Mr Badal said while the SAD always strongly condemned any incident of sacrilege, a thorough probe should be conducted into the entire case after new revelations. “It has been revealed that the deceased was a labourer and drug addict without any known sources of income. How he reached Singhu needs to be verified. The entire issue could be probed by a sitting judge of the Supreme Court to bring all facets of the case out in the open”.
In reply to another query, Mrs Badal said the SAD would never ally with any party which had backstabbed Punjab and which was trying to defame Punjabis besides endangering its agriculture and economy. She also disclosed that even though she had started getting indications as a union minister that the BJP was not following the coalition dharma and not being true to the SAD. “Despite this we continued with the coalition for the betterment of Punjab as well as peace and communal harmony. However when we came to know that the BJP was bent upon striking against the farmers of Punjab we chose to sever our decades old relations with the party and quit both the ministry as well as the NDA alliance”.
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Mrs Badal was
accompanied by party Jalandhar Cantonment candidate Jagbir Singh Brar and the
senior leadership of the district.