Chandigarh, September 27
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Punjab senior leader and Leader of Opposition (LoP) Harpal Singh Cheema has termed the Chief Minister’s claim on the inclusion of Rana Gurjit Singh in the cabinet as hollow, in which Charanjit Singh Channi had said that sand mafia should not try to meet him. Cheema said, “When the kingpin of the mining mafia is sitting in the cabinet, then such claims of Chief Minister Channi about the sand mafia are nothing but misleading the people.”
In a statement issued from the party headquarters here on Monday, Harpal Singh Cheema said the inclusion of corrupt and tainted leaders in the cabinet has proved that the Congress cannot change its character even by changing faces. “The entry of senior ministers in the cabinet has also blown away Channi’s claim in which he had said that either he will remain or the corrupt will be there,” he added. Cheema argued that the tainted ministers are not being opposed as only being the opposition party, but the ruling Congress MLAs are also opposing them.
He said the letter written by the Congress MLAs to Sonia Gandhi has corroborated the AAP’s allegations. Cheema said if Chief Minister Channi had stuck to his anti-corruption claim, he would not have allowed the entry of tainted ministers in the cabinet at any cost. But Channi has succumbed to the Congress High Command and ‘self-styled super CM’ Navjot Singh Sidhu for his chair. Because of these weaknesses, the Congress is called the mother of corruption, he asserted. Cheema also expressed surprise at the parameters of the Congress and said that no leader in the Congress is innocent; but the entry of Bharat Bhushan Ashu, Rana Gurjit Singh, Raja Warring and Gurkirat Kotli in the cabinet has put Channi, Sidhu and the Gandhi family in the dock.
The AAP leader further said that the Congress will have to answer this to the people of Punjab. He said apart from controversies related to the Ludhiana land mafia, Bharat Bhushan Ashu also controls the Mandi mafia worth 10,000 crore rupees. “The gang selling wheat/paddy from outside states and selling it in the mandis of Punjab is causing huge loss to the exchequer and the farmers of Punjab, under the patronage of Ashu. It is because of this embezzlement of thousands of crores that the Modi government at the centre has given an opportunity to impose conditions on the purchase of crops in Punjab,” said Cheema.
Harpal Singh Cheema said the limit fixed on the quantity of paddy procurement is the latest example of this. But instead of registering an FIR against Ashu, the Congress has again included him in the cabinet. It has become clear that there will always be a respectable place for corruption and corrupt people in the Congress, he said. Giving a week’s ultimatum to the Charanjit Singh Channi government, Cheema warned that if cases were not registered against former minister Sadhu Singh Dharamsot and other corrupt ministers; the Aam Aadmi Party would wage a state-level struggle against the government.
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