Court has acquitted Badal but popular verdict remains same: says Khangura - 02/10/2010
CHANDIGARH, October 2: Qila Raipur MLA Jassi Khangura today said the honourable court has acquitted the Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, his son Sukhbir Badal and other family members and associates of all the corruption charges, but the popular verdict remains the same that the Badals are the most corrupt people in the state.
Reacting to the court judgment, Khangura said, “whilst we respect the judgement of the Honourable Court in acquitting S. Parkash Singh Badal, Sukhbir Badal and others, the Badal family remains firmly corrupt in the public eye”.
He said, no one has ruled Punjab for longer than Mr Badal and he alone is most responsible for the culture of institutionalised corruption that pervades Punjab today. He maintained that the court verdict points towards the lame state prosecution and the influencing and threatening of the witnesses. “Why else would the court pass strictures against Punjab government officials?” he asked.
The Qila Raipur MLA maintained, for all his significant failings during a long political career none looms larger than Badal’s abject failure to avoid the stigma of massive corruption. “In the public eye the corrupt practices of the Badal family, if anything, accelerated once Sukhbir Badal entered the political arena”, he pointed out, while asking, “how else do the Badals explain their five star hotels, their massive fleet of busses, their large farm houses, their regal palaces in Badal village, Chandigarh and Haryana, their private jets, their expensive ponies for the junior most Badals, the frequent overseas visits and shopping trips?”
Khangura observed, history will not be kind to Mr Badal for he will above all be remembered as a notoriously corrupt politician who sacrificed the interests of Punjab for personal gain, albeit a relatively less corrupt in the family who was unwilling or unable to control the overarching corrupt tendencies of his direct family members.
The Congress legislator asserted, this may not be the last legal action that the family faces for corruption. “One day when the protection of governance and politics is denied to the Badal family, one thing is for certain: they will not be found on Indian soil for they will have decamped with their loot to foreign shores”, he remarked
