BJP flays Capt letter to Blackwill

The BJP today took exception to Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh writing to US Ambassador Robert Blackwill, seeking permission to send a team to Iraq for reconstruction of a gurdwara damaged during the war.

BJP parliamentary party spokesman Vijay Kumar Malhotra said that Singh’s action was ‘‘unconstitutional’’ and described it as ‘‘the heights of impropriety.’’ ‘‘CM cannot directly correspond with a foreign government,’’ he said.

The BJP spokesman said that Singh’s communication to Blackwill also conferred a legitimacy on the US occupation of Iraq. He said Parliament has already adopted a unanimous resolution calling for a prompt US withdrawal from Iraq so that Iraqis could run their country.