Crowd at the Sadbhavna Rally in Moga on Saturday (Express Photo by Gurmeet Singh)
The new Punjab Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh was the ultimate target of the unsparing attacks launched by Badals at the second Sadbhawna rally of Shiromani Akali Dal in Moga on Saturday.
Giving an ultimatum of two days to Amarinder ‘to remove the Congress leaders who attended and supported the Sarbat Khalsa’, deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal said that ‘if new PPCC president Captain Amarinder Singh fails to take action against Ramanjit Singh Sikki, Harminder Singh Gill and Inderjit Singh Zira’, it would be obvious that he well supported Sarbat Khalsa and ‘anti-national separatist theory.’
“Captain is scared. He is scared to the core. Is he a Babbar sher (roaring lion)? No, he is an old and tired lion whom we have already defeated in 2007 and 2012 assembly polls. Now, PPCC president saab should remain prepared for 2017 loss too. They are so terrified that now they are even exploring anti-national ways. I would like to ask Amarinder that what was Sikki, their MLA doing at Sarbat Khalsa supporting Khalistan agenda?” asked Sukhbir.
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“Not only Sikki, with whose permission Inderjit Singh Zira and Harminder Gill supported that Khalistani platform? If within next two days, Captain fails to remove them from the party it would corroborate my claims that he and Rahul Gandhi both support Sarbat Khalsa and these leaders supported that anti national gathering on their orders,” said Sukhbir.
“It would be enough proof that it all happened on the directions of Amarinder and Rahul Gandhi,” he added.
Even as Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal claimed multiple times that this rally is completely ‘apolitical’, he too launched scathing attacks on Captain Amarinder Singh and called him ‘master of divisive politics’.
Accusing Amarinder of creating ‘tension between Hindus and Sikhs in state’ for his ‘own political motives’, CM said, “I congratulate Amarinder for becoming new PPCC president but let me tell you that this man is the master of divisive politics. Though this rally is completely apolitical, still I would like to remind that how Congress snatched our Chandigarh and led 1984 carnage against the Sikhs. Captain’s circus will end in few days because he is the person who even spoke against his own party vice-president Rahul Gandhi and then took a U-turn for the chair.”
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Terming Amarinder as a person who always believed in ‘confrontation’, CM said, “He spoke against Bajwa (Partap Singh) when he was PPCC president and then against Rahul Gandhi. It is because he loves confrontations. He is intolerant towards anyone other than him getting the chair. When Captain was CM, hundreds of Akalis were booked in false police cases but since we came to power not a single Congress person has been framed in any false case. This is the kind of cheap politics that only Captain knows to play.”
CM said that he is ‘ready to apologize multiple times’ for the sake of ‘peace of Punjab’ but he has ‘done no wrong’. “I have no ego and thus for sake of Punjab and its hard earned peace, I can apologize to my people multiple times but I have done nothing wrong in whatever happened recently,” said CM.
BJP national secretary Tarun Chugh meanwhile praising SAD said that ‘it is the only party which will work for Punjab.’ “It was Captain who ordered Sikka to support Sarbat Khalsa. It was all done with Captain in confidence. Do you still believe that a party which supports separatists will work for you? It is only Badals who are true saviors of Punjab,” said Chugh.
Calling AAP as one of the ‘masterminds’ behind Sarbat Khalsa, he said, “Aam Aadmi Party is using social media to create tensions in Punjab.”
Divya Goyal is a Principal Correspondent with The Indian Express, based in Punjab.
Her interest lies in exploring both news and feature stories, with an effort to reflect human interest at the heart of each piece. She writes on gender issues, education, politics, Sikh diaspora, heritage, the Partition among other subjects. She has also extensively covered issues of minority communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She also explores the legacy of India's partition and distinct stories from both West and East Punjab.
She is a gold medalist from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Delhi, the most revered government institute for media studies in India, from where she pursued English Journalism (Print). Her research work on “Role of micro-blogging platform Twitter in content generation in newspapers” had won accolades at IIMC.
She had started her career in print journalism with Hindustan Times before switching to The Indian Express in 2012.
Her investigative report in 2019 on gender disparity while treating women drug addicts in Punjab won her the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity in 2020. She won another Laadli for her ground report on the struggle of two girls who ride a boat to reach their school in the border village of Punjab.
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