BJP anti-drug drive in rural Punjab from Jan
Wednesday, 24/12/2014
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CHANDIGARH: Making the antidrug-abuse agenda its own, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will organise a march through 6,000 Punjab villages in January to generate awareness about the menace.
Party president Amit Shah would begin the campaign from Amritsar on January 12, BJP minister Madan Mohan Mittal said here on Tuesday, adding that Shah would also address a rally that day. The BJP has been trying to take the high moral ground over the issue, with its state president Kamal Sharma demanding the resignation of Akali minister Bikram Singh Majithia, whom Enforcement Directorate (ED) has summoned in a drug case.
Mittal, who joined the Punjab chief minister for a press conference, declined to clarify the stand of the BJP ministers and legislator over the issue. “My state party chief has given a suggestion to the chief minister. It is for him to decide,” he said, adding that the BJP stand on drug abuse was “zero tolerance”.
All Tuesday, the BJP ministers and legislators were in the opposition line of fire, as the Congress kept asking them about their stand on the Majithia issue. None of the BJP legislators raised it in the assembly, inviting further criticism. “They (the BJP legislators) have been promised lucrative businesses in return for their silence,” quipped a Congress member of the House.
RESOLUTION PASSED FOR TRANSFER OF CHANDIGARH
After the Congress walked out of the assembly, the treasury benches moved a resolution to demand the transfer of Chandigarh and the Punjabi speaking areas of Haryana to Punjab. It was passed with the consensus of the BJP legislators, none of whom objected to the resolution that is likely to lead to a direct confrontation with Haryana, a BJP-ruled state.
CONDEMNATION RESOLUTION PASSED
The treasury benches moved a resolution to condemn the manner in which the Congress legislator had behaved in the assembly on Tuesday, “disrespecting the House and the speaker’s chair”. The parliamentary affairs minister moved the resolution, pointing out that the Congress legislators had been raising slogans all day and using unparliamentarily language. It was passed.
