No need to announce CM candidate yet: Amarinder

Sunday, 05/07/2015

http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

PATIALA: Former CM Capt Amarinder Singh said there was no need for the Congress to announce the CM candidate for the 2017 Assembly elections.

With people accusing him and state Congress president Partap Singh Bajwa of fighting for being the chief ministerial candidate of the Congress, destabilising the party in the state in the process, Amarinder said there was no need to announce the candidate.

He said this when reminded that Congress general secretary Shakeel Ahmad had said that the Congress would not announce its CM candidate.

He was speaking to the media here after the Rajpura rally.

“The Congress always contests elections without naming the CM candidate. After the elections, the legislators under the supervision of the party high command, elect their leader, who is nominated as the CLP (Congress Legislature Party) leader. If we look at history, the Congress never announced its CM candidate. Last time, Rahul Gandhi had announced my name as CM candidate a few days ahead of polling. I am grateful to him for the support,” he said.

The Amritsar MP added that he was fine with the norm of not announcing the chief ministerial candidate during the time of elections.

He said there were no differences in the party as projected by the media. “Leave aside the differences, we all are working for strengthening the party,” he said while referring to his programme vis-a-vis Bajwa’s mass contact pogramme.

On the joint parliamentary committee recommending a 100% hike in the salary of parliamentarians, Amarinder said he didn’t agree with the proposal. There was no need for such a hike, he said. CAPT TO RELEASE DULAT’S BOOK Amarinder supported the revelation by former RAW chief AS Dulat saying the NDA is in denial mode as the revelations did not suit it. He said the hijacked Air India plane should have stopped at Amritsar.

He termed the Kandahar hijack as a colossal failure of the then NDA government policymakers. He said he was fully aware of the facts of the Kandahar hijack that Dulat had presented in his book.

“Though I have not read the book, whatever I came to know from the media is true. All those who are denying the facts are doing this because the revelations don’t suit them politically. But truth is truth,” he said, blaming the then cabinet secretariat for not supporting the then Punjab DGP Sarabjit Singh, who wanted to launch a commando operation to take control of the hijacked plane.

Amarinder said DGP Sarabjit Singh had made two calls, but the cabinet secretariat never replied. Even former DGP KPS Gill had also made a suggestion, but the officials concerned didn’t take his calls. “This shows it was a colossal failure of the then government,” he said, adding that he would release the book in Chandigarh in July’s last week.