Open war in Punjab Congress: Capt Amarinder singh to form new party, says Partap Singh Bajwa

Bajwa hit back strongly and said Singh was working with the BJP. “Captain has a game plan. He is waiting for the Bihar polls. He feels the BJP will win there. He is working with the BJP. The plan is that the BJP will pull out of the Punjab government next March. And he will leave the Congress and form a new party. The name has already been registered. It is called Punjab Vikas Party,” Bajwa told The Indian Express.

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He further claimed the new party will be floated on April 13, next year at Talwandi Sabo, one of the five temporal seats of the Sikhs. Assembly election is due in Punjab in early 2017. “In 1984, he backstabbed the Congress and joined the Akali Dal. He had then contested from Talwandi Sabo and not Patiala, a Congress bastion. He was a minister in the Akali Dal government. His plan is to float the new party on Baisakhi (April 13),” Bajwa added.

He claimed the “Amarinder-BJP plan” was to engineer minor defections in the Akali Dal after the BJP pullout and bring down the government. “He has even identified and worked on the MLAs who would defect; I can even name them. A couple of them he had loaned to the Akali Dal to ensure that the government goes slow on corruption cases against him,” Bajwa said.

He further claimed Singh would continue in the Congress for another six months to try and “wean away” as many MLAs and leaders as possible. “Congressmen are attending his meetings and rallies where hoardings do not have photos of the party president, vice president, general secretary in charge or any other leader. Congressmen believe he is going to be at the helm of party affairs in Punjab and are attending his meetings. They don’t know his game plan,” he said.

He alleged that to influence leaders Singh is also offering posts to influential Congress leaders in the Jat Mahasabha which he heads. Bajwa claimed the Captain is cozying up to the BJP because he is under pressure from the ruling party on the income tax probe into the link between his wife Preneet Kaur’s HSBC Geneva account and certain trusts and companies. Bajwa said Singh, deputy leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha, stayed away from Parliament because he did not want to speak on the Lalit Modi affair and the Vyapam scam. “The BJP would have retaliated had he attacked it. He wanted to save himself,” he said.

“The high command should show him the door. We don’t want these kinds of defectors in the party. The rank and file of the Congress in Punjab is with Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. He is day dreaming of splitting the party. He will be a loner,” he added.