War of words starts over CM Badal’s federal pitch
Tuesday, 09/12/2014
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CHANDIGARH: Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal’s seeking recasting of the Constitution in favour of a “real federal structure” has triggered a war of words in the state.
People’s Party of Punjab (PPP) president Manpreet Singh Badal on Monday questioned the intentions of Badal behind raising the demand at the CMs’ meeting that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had convened on Sunday to discuss the restructuring of the Planning Commission. Manpreet said the demand’s timing smacked of political opportunism.
Shiromani Akali senior leader and MP Prem Singh Chandumajra on Monday dismissed the objections of Manpreet Singh Badal as “an utterly uneducated and immature response”.
The PPP leader was straightforward in attacking Badal. “Rather than sincerity to the cause, the CM has the history of backtracking from this demand. Now he has raised the issue at the time when the relations between the (PM’s) Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) his Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and are in a tense phase and the future of the alliance is uncertain. The timing also coincides with the shift in the SAD once again towards the Panthic agenda to mobilise the Sikh support base of the party that got eroded over the years,” said Manpreet.
The issue Badal had raised on Sunday was a sugarcoated version of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, said the PPP leader, recalling that Badal had convened a meeting of the nonCongress chief ministers on this very issue in 1979 after the Akali Dal had formed the government in alliance with the-then Janata Party in 1977; and that the-then West Bengal chief minister, Jyoti Basu, had welcomed the initiative. “However, for reasons best known to him, he (Badal) backtracked at the last moment and cancelled the meeting,” said Manpreet.
He said the best time to press for federalism had been in the mid-1990s when regional parties had seemed to be dominating the scene at the Centre. “That opportunity was lost as Badal was not sincere to the cause, and moreover, the party had made a conscious shift towards the agenda of Punjabiat, in which issues such as federalism had no place,” said the PPP president.
He referred to “qualitative change in the situation in the country since the BJP’s coming to power on its own at the Centre under the command of Narendra Modi. The national agenda now would not be influenced by the regional parties but dictated by the BJP, which also was for more powers to the states to facilitate development, said Manpreet, calling the demand raised by Badal outside those parameters of more powers.
AKALI REACTION
Reacting to the Manpreet statement here, Chandumajra said the PPP leader should clarify his own position on Badal’s demand, especially on the basis of his experience as the state’s finance minister.
The Akali leader said the PPP chief did not even seem to know what he was opposing because as finance minister he had himself complained of the Centre’s crippling hold on all resources and powers on policy formulation and decision-making processes in the country, reducing the states to the plight of beggars at the door of the Centre.
The SAD general secretary said that even as an Akali, Manpreet had never tried to understand why his own party had spearheaded a nation-wide campaign for federal structure, nor had he ever tried to understand the philosophy of regional autonomy on which the basic approach of the SAD to federalism rested.
“About why Badal chose the timing now, it is laughable that Manpreet does not know that the timing of the debate was not decided by Badal but by the Prime Minister,” the Akali leader said.
