NEW DELHI:The Congress today said that the Aam Aadmi Party had unleashed anarchy in Punjab and had surrendered to gangsters, while failing to curb the drug menace. The party also demanded the dismissal of Punjab Finance Minister Harpal Cheema, for having been named by a Dalit man in his dying declaration that he was responsible for his death.
Addressing a press conference here today, Leader of Opposition in the Punjab Assembly Partap Singh Bajwa said that the AAP had already started applying the ‘saam, daam, dand, bhed’ formula of its leader Manish Sisodia to win elections by hook or by crook. However, he asserted that no matter what the AAP did, it would never be able to win elections again in Punjab as it was for the first and the last time that it could win in 2022.
Bajwa also took a dig at the ‘Yudh Nashya Virudh’ campaign of the AAP, saying that when it could not reform its own Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and get him to give up drinking, how could it claim success in the fight against drugs? He pointed out, Mann had even gone inside the Punjab Assembly in an inebriated condition and had refused to undergo an alcohol test.
Referring to the AAP inducting dreaded gangster Gurpreet Sekhon into the party, Bajwa said Sekhon was facing charges in 47 criminal cases, including the infamous Nabha Jailbreak that took place in November 2016 and several murder cases. He said Sekhon had been convicted and sentenced to ten years’ jail term for the jailbreak, but his sentence had subsequently been suspended by the Punjab and Haryana High Court. He disclosed that the AAP was planning to field Sekhon from the Zira Assembly constituency.
Bajwa also referred to the AAP’s links with another dreaded gangster, Jaggu Bhagwanpuria, who though imprisoned in an Assam jail was still calling shots in Punjab. He questioned how Bhagwanpuria was able to make phone calls to people from a jail in a BJP-ruled state.
The senior Congress leader noted that the AAP-criminal nexus was being replayed. He said, the gangster culture and drug addiction were the two existential threats Punjab was facing. “While the AAP has failed completely on the issue of drugs, it has not only surrendered before the gangsters but is now providing them with a political platform,” he said.
Demanding the sacking of Finance Minister Cheema, he referred to the suicide of Gulzar Singh, a Dalit man from Dirba in Sangrur district, who took his own life after being humiliated by Cheema’s henchmen just because he had flagged the easy availability of drugs in his area to which his own son had fallen a victim and had turned an addict. In his dying declaration, Gulzar Singh had named Harpal Cheema as responsible for his death, he added.
Maintaining that the AAP had turned Punjab into a police state and Kejriwal and Mann were using the police as their “private militia”, Bajwa disclosed that on September 2, a youth named Mohanjit, a native of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s home district, had waved a black flag at the Chief Minister to highlight the drug problem. He said, Mohanjit was arrested by the police, beaten blue, and had his hair and beard pulled, sparking widespread outrage across the state.
