A day after SAD Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal termed her ‘slender margin’ as historic mandate, Congress leader Sukhpal Khaira on Monday dubbed it as “not only laughable, bereft of political decency but a clever ploy to camouflage her declining popularity through jugglery of figures and percentages”.
Khaira, who resigned from the post of party spokesperson only a day before, described Harsimrat’s ‘lame defence’ to describe her wafer thin victory in Bathinda as a historic mandate as ‘nothing but a perfect tailor-made feudal statement’.
He has, in fact, urged the “Badal-Majithia clans to come out with a humble statement, accepting defeat and offer the resignation of Parkash Singh Badal as the Chief Minister of the state, as is done by Nitish Kumar in Bihar to uphold morality in politics”. He said, “the fact of the matter is that Manpreet Badal put up a brave fight against all odds, and fought valiantly and single-handedly. Apart from Rahul Gandhi’s one political rally, no senior Congress leader of the state campaigned for him even for a day. It is an open secret that the entire might of Punjab Government, including the civil and police machinery had worked overtime to ensure her victory.”
Terming the Badal clans as “pioneers, and experts in polluting electoral system with mega money power, massive drug abuse and ruthless muscle power,” Khaira pointed that there were confirmed reports that they had fixed a rate of Rs 10,000 per vote and pumped in more than Rs 100 crore to buy one lakh votes in Bathinda to ensure her victory.
“Despite all these cheap machinations and manipulations, Harsimrat could lead only by 19,435 votes compared to her 1.20 lakh victory margin during 2009 lok Sabha polls. Instead of making lofty claims of a big victory, she must realise that if the anti-incumbency votes of Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) are combined, Harsimrat would have been defeated by more than 68,000 votes (4.94 lakh of Congress + 0.87 lakh of AAP = 5.81 lakh against her 5.13 lakh).
Asking her to ‘introspect’, he pointed that 57 per cent people voted against the alliance, and the SAD’s vote share dropped from its 40 per cent in 2012 Assembly elections to 26.3 per cent.