Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal on Tuesday admitted that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) may have won a majority in the State if the Assembly elections were held a year ago. But, at the same time, he maintained that AAP is unlikely to get seats in double digit in the polls next year.
“If assembly elections were held a year ago, AAP might have won 70 seats, but now the scenario has totally changed (and) as of now, the party will not get more than nine seats, whereas Congress may get 35-40 seats and we will get 70 seats,” he said.
“With every visit of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to Punjab, AAP loses more seats as people have seen through him. Even if the elections were held in Delhi today, the AAP will not get majority there also,” he claimed. “Punjabis like to try new things…Now they have seen AAP and they have seen that Kejriwal promises something, does something else. They have discarded him,” said Sukhbir, while participating in a media event.
A confident Sukhbir said that the ruling SAD will complete its “hat-trick” in Punjab as he ruled out AAP from the race while indicating that the contest was between his party and Congress.
On the issue of drug menace in Punjab, Sukhbir said that it was a “propaganda” to defame the youth of the State. “All this started when (Congress vice president) Rahul Gandhi came to Punjab and read from a paper saying 70 per cent of youth in the State are drug addicts. Whereas the reality was that 70 per cent of drug addicts were youth, his problem is he can only read from what is given to him written on a paper,” said the SAD president.
He further said that it has been established that with latest police recruitment that very negligible percentage youth are taking drugs.
“Recently, our Government conducted recruitment for the State police and for which more than four lakh youngsters applied. We conducted tests and only 1.26 per cent were found taking drugs. And that is half the national average. This result should finally put to rest the startling figures of drug abuse in Punjab that have been making rounds,” he said.
He said that the “propaganda” is “defaming the youth” in Punjab and is against the State and should be stopped. However, he said that the Border Security Force, which guards the border Punjab shares with Pakistan, needs to be more vigilant to check the flow of drugs from across the State.
Taking a dig at the cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu, Sukhbir maintained that the former BJP leader will not have any bearing on the State assembly elections this year.
“Sidhu did not have any ideology to follow since he was about to join Congress, to whom he criticised earlier…I have no grudge against Sidhu. I always supported him. However, he criticised me to remain in the news,” he said.
Sukhbir added, “I do not think he will make any impact in the election. He will be a non-player. Now, he is interested in Congress. He had criticised Congress earlier. He had bargained with Aam Adami Party. What could be his ideology since he has put himself in the market for bargainIJ” He also made it clear that anti-incumbency was not an issue as was being made out by the media in Punjab elections. “There are so many other Governments in the country which are serving their third term in office. People reward performance and I can confidently state that our Government has delivered on all its promises,” he said while rating infrastructure development as the biggest success of his Government.