Capt questions Badal’s ‘hibernation’, advises him to break his ‘silence’
Sunday, 15/11/2015
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CHANDIGARH: Asking chief minister Parkash Singh Badal to come out of “hibernation” and break his “silence”, Congress deputy leader in Lok Sabha Capt Amarinder Singh on Saturday said the former had again let down the state by virtually running away from the situation and leaving his second-rung leaders to defend him and his government.
Amarinder rejected the SAD allegations of a Congress hand in the radical Sarbat Khalsa. Referring to the purported phone recordings claimed to be those of Congress leaders, he said, “These are concocted and our leaders have already dismissed these allegations as baseless.” He said, “By claiming to be in possession of the phone recordings of our leaders, hasn’t the government admitted that it has been tapping the phones of its political opponents, which is a serious crime.” Or, how come they were in possession of these recordings, he wondered.
“It is high time Badal came out of the hiding and owned up what is happening in the state as he is the chief minister,” he said, while criticising the continued “silence” of the chief minister at a time when the state is passing through a sensitive stage.
The former chief minister said it was characteristic of Badal to push the situation to the brink and go into hiding. “He is precisely repeating it now,” he said, adding, just because he did not have the option of running away being the chief minister, he has gone into hiding and is avoiding the public. He said had Badal been concerned about public good he would have held sangat darshan, met the public and addressed their grievances. “But he will never do that as he does things only to please himself,” he claimed. SAD TAKES A JIBE AT AMARINDER The SAD took a jibe at Congress deputy leader in the Lok Sabha Amarinder Singh, saying, the Congress leader who was “more at home in the hills or London”, was talking about the accessibility of the chief minister.
In a statement here, senior leaders Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa and Balwinder Singh Bhundur said Amarinder should explain where he had been during the last four years.
“Is it not true that the number of days you spent in Punjab in the last four years can be counted on the finger tips?” they jointly said.
