Chandigarh, January 24: Ridiculing the brazen lies of AAP, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Sunday said the non-evidence shared by the party to support their baseless allegations against him had shown the extent of their desperation and had exposed the shocking levels of deceit to which they had stooped in the pursuit of their politically motivated agenda.
From sharing a selectively edited video of his (Chief Minister’s statements) to the release of a list of the final committee members, the AAP spokesperson had made yet another desperate attempt to sell his party’s pack of lies to the people of Punjab, said Captain Amarinder, adding that these actions showed that Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had hit rock bottom in its desperation to promote its political agenda in the state, where they had been unceremoniously rejected by voters in 2017 Assembly polls and in every election thereafter.
“If they think that by sharing a doctored video they can befool the people of Punjab then AAP leaders are even more ignorant about this state then I had believed them to be,” said the Chief Minister. The fact that they needed to resort to such cheap tactics to find a footing in Punjab goes to show that they have no concrete agenda for the state, he added.
Captain Amarinder questioned AAP spokesperson, a nobody in Punjab’s political arena, on what he was seeking to prove by sharing a copy of the final list of the high-powered committee members, dated 7th August, 2019, when the original committee (minus Punjab) was actually set up on 15th June 2019. These dates are clearly mentioned on the documents shared by their spokesperson himself, he pointed out.
“Don’t you understand the difference between Punjab not originally being included in the Committee and being named a member after I personally wrote to the Centre on the issue? How does flaunting the final list, in which Punjab was included after my intervention prove me wrong?,” asked the Chief Minister, adding that he had never once claimed that Punjab was not in the reconstituted committee.
“Had AAP bothered to share the complete videos of my statements, the truth of what I have been saying would have been endorsed, which is obviously why they have carefully doctored my recorded statements,” Captain Amarinder said, adding that when the first meeting of the committee was held, Punjab was not part of it.
And after Punjab’s inclusion at his behest, one meeting had discussed financial issues, with Manpreet Badal in attendance, while the last had only Agriculture Secretary as the invited participant.
“All this is a matter of record, which AAP clearly does not believe in checking out,” he said, adding that their spokesperson, in his enthusiasm to prove himself as the newly appointed in-charge of the party’s Punjab affairs, had obviously failed to do his homework. Or perhaps, he was simply following in the footsteps of his mentor, Kejriwal, who was a shameless master of deceit, with no qualms about trying to palm off lies as the truth, said the Chief Minister.
Captain Amarinder further pointed out that even the agenda of the Committee, which AAP was repeatedly referring to in a bid to support their lies, never mentioned any farm laws or new legislations.
This was again a matter of record, he said, pointing to the Terms of Reference of the committee. He further added that his cabinet colleague Manpreet Badal had already released the minutes of the committee meeting attended by him and the Punjab government’s note to the Centre.
“Your fake claims and allegations will not negate the truth of facts that are on record,” he told the AAP leaders.
Taking a dig at AAP over the RTI response copy shared by their spokesperson Rghav Chadha, Captain Amarinder quipped that this document, in fact, proved that the Farm Laws were introduced and implemented by the Centre without the report of the high-powered committee even being placed before the Governing Council of the Niti Aayog.
“I am surprised that the AAP spokesperson did not even read the documents he himself showed to the media as purported proof of his allegations,” added the Chief Minister.
Mocking AAP’s statement that the powers of implement any laws should be given to the states, Captain Amarinder said that the demand was completely frivolous and senseless since their own government in Delhi had already notified the implementation of one of the Farm Laws. “If that is not a case of match-fixing between AAP and BJP, then I wonder what is?”, he remarked.
