Chandigarh, 16 September: Dismissing him as a failed leader who had no locus standii to judge the present state government, the Punjab Congress has accused Sukhbir Singh Badal of criticising the ruling party in a desperate bid to cover the Akali lapses of the past 10 years.
In a statement issued here on Saturday, the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) said the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president’s utterances against the government were sheer nonsense and aimed at diverting public attention from the economic, social and political ruin into which the erstwhile SAD-BJP government had plunged the state and which would be the main issue in the forthcoming Gurdaspur Lok Sabha by-election.
In their joint statement, Congress Vice President Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, SS Sukhsarkaria, Harpartap Singh Ajnala, Brinderjit Singh Pahra, Tarsem Singh DC and Dharambir Agnihotri (All MLAs) questioned Sukhbir’s credentials to pass judgement over a popular government.
He was neither the leader of the opposition nor did he have the political stature to judge any government, they said, adding that Sukhbir had been totally rejected by the people of Punjab and marginalised politically.
The Akalis had suffered their worst ever electoral defeat in the last Assembly polls in the state and, with the Gurdaspur election already announced, were now staring at another crushing defeat, said the PPCC leaders. The people of Punjab had not forgotten the mafia rule of the Akalis nor were they ignorant of the NDA mis-governance at the Centre, they added.
The Congress leaders challenged Sukhbir to cite specific examples of how many and which hospitals, colleges, schools, roads, rivers, land etc had been developed under the Akali rule instead of making sweeping claims. They pointed out that the National Highway projects for which Sukhbir was taking credit were sanctioned by the Centre and SAD-BJP had nothing to do with them.
Even the airports created by his governmentare non or partially functional as is the Rs. 600 crore BRTS project in Amritsar, they noted.
The PPCC leaders pointed out that the Akali rule was marked only by corruption and scams, as already exposed in various PWD and local government projects. Sukhbir and his cronies, they said, were guilty of promoting drug culture, police high-handedness, unemployment, farmer suicides, and of accumulating wealth by looting the state in their ten year misrule.
The Congressmen further said that nobody should judge the present government just six months in the saddle, as the state is facing a serious financial crisis created by the Akali Government.
“Give the Congress atleast a year to clear the mess created by the Akalis and the BJP in Punjab and you will see the results,” they added.