Kharar (Mohali), December 31: Lashing out at the State BJP President for spreading false propaganda to further his party’s political agenda, Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Thursday said Ashwani Sharma’s desperate attempts to falsely project a law & order problem in Punjab reflected the party’s fear of complete annihilation in the upcoming civic polls.
Interacting informally with mediapersons after dedicating the Chandigarh-Kharar elevated corridor to citizens, the Chief Minister said the state BJP’s request to the Governor for postponement of the civic polls on the baseless grounds of law and order situation collapse showed that the party leadership was in complete panic at the prospect of facing the elections at a time when the people were angry at them over the black Farm Laws.
Faced with the wrath of the people of Punjab, Ashwani and his party colleagues were now resorting to desperate measures to wriggle out of the polls, he said. Pointing out that Punjab had been voted as Number #1 state in India on the law and order front in the ‘States of State’ annual survey conducted by India Today, the Chief Minister said the bogey of law and order problems in Punjab was being created by BJP only to save itself from the anger of the farmers. Their frustration was evident from their bid to pass off pictures of his old meetings with some corporate leaders as a collusion against the farmers, he added.
Dismissing as `atrocious’ BJP state leadership’s charges that the Congress was responsible for the damage to mobile towers, and the resultant loss of studies to the students, the Chief Minister asked, “Are we responsible for the farmers’ angst against the BJP?” “We were not the ones who enacted the Farm Laws, it was the BJP-led central government. We, in fact, negated them by passing the amendment Bills in the Assembly,” he added.
Noting that following his appeals and the strict warning to those damaging property, the number of such incidents had come down drastically, Captain Amarinder said this clearly exposed the lies being shamelessly mouthed by Sharma.
Only a couple of incidents of minor damage were reported today, he said, adding that his government would ensure that not a single case of damage takes place in the coming days. The situation was now under control, with most of the damaged towers already repaired, he added.
While these incidents were unfortunate, the fact was that these were happening as a result of the spontaneous outburst of farmers as their genuine demands had not been conceded so far, said the Chief Minister, trashing Punjab BJP leaders’ claims that the Government of India had been accepted the demands of the farmers from the outset.
Had their demands been conceded, the farmers would not have been sitting out in the winter chill at Delhi’s borders, he said, adding that the power-hungry BJP leaders had remained untouched even by the fact that some 50 protesting farmers had died, including some by suicide.
Asked to comment on the acceptance of two of the key demands of the agitating farmers by the Centre at their last round of meeting, Captain Amarinder Singh said that the issue was now between the farmers and the Government of India. He hoped the Centre would soon accede the remaining demands of the farmers too.
Replying to a question regarding Local Bodies elections in the state, the Chief Minister said that the process is already under way and the dates would be finalized and announced soon, as Constitutionally, the Government was bound to hold these elections before February 15, 2021.
