As the ruling AAP in Punjab held its “Vikas Kranti Rally” in Maur of Bathinda district on Sunday where Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal took potshots at the Opposition, senior Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu also held a rally in the same district and made scathing attacks on both AAP leaders for “failing to deliver the promises made to Punjab voters before the state assembly elections last year”. Sidhu held the rally at Mehraj village, around 32 km from suburb Maur. With a population of nearly 18,000, it is also the ancestral village of former Punjab CM Captain Amarinder Singh – Sidhu's bête noire. Apart from lambasting Mann and Kejriwal, in his nearly 40-minute address, Sidhu also tore into Amarinder Singh, blaming him for the party’s humiliating defeat in Punjab assembly elections last year. Amarinder Singh is now with the BJP. Sidhu said, “I told Captain Amarinder Singh that he had a glorious past. So he should live up to that glory and get his name recorded in the annals of history by working for the people…but where is he now? The party (Congress) expelled him.” Sidhu also took a dig at Amarinder Singh’s successor, former CM Charanjit Singh Channi, saying that everyone knows how much impact “milking goats” had on the party (the Congress) prospects in the 2022 Punjab assembly elections. Channi was seen milking goats during his pre-poll campaign last year which probably was one of his several moves to project himself as a “common man” in Punjab as the Congress had contested the elections projecting him as the CM face. The grand old party eventually suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of AAP. Sidhu said, “I have no issues with Channi being a party colleague. After him (Amarinder Singh), I also told Channi that please put in your everything and dedicate four months (of his stint as the CM before the polls) for the people with all his heart. But the result is in front of you all. did Punjab resurrect itself by milking goats?” Referring to the issue of illegal sand mining, Sidhu said the sand tipper which earlier costed “Rs 3,000” now costs “Rs 21,000”. He hit out at Mann and Kejriwal for promising Rs 20,000 crore revenue from sand mining, but “the AAP government could collect a mere Rs 125 crore”. The former Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee chief also lashed out at the AAP leaders for not fulfilling the pre-poll promise of giving Rs 1,000 allowance per month to every Punjab woman aged 18 and above. Vowing to ensure Maharaja Ranjit Singh like rule in Punjab, Sidhu said, “30 saalan ton mukh mantri jitde aaye te Punjab haarda aaya. 30 saal ton mukh mantri bannde aaye te dhanda karde aaye. business karde aaye. Punjab nu vechde aaye. Punjab nu girvi dharde aaye aa (In the last 30 years, politicians who became CMs went on to win, but Punjab kept losing. For 30 years, Punjab CMs did business, kept on selling Punjab and mortgaging Punjab).” “I don’t think that CMs, who were indifferent to Punjab, prevailed or won. Guru did not spare any of them,” Sidhu said. “Mehraj is basically a village of clans of (Jat Sikhs) Sidhus, Bahias and a few others. People were very excited to attend his (Sidhu’s) rally,” Rajinder Singh, a former Congress MLA from Samana, told The Indian Express.
