The drug menace in Punjab has triggered a game of political one-upmanship in Punjab involving alliance partners BJP and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) as well as the Congress.
While the SAD is all gearing up to stage sit-ins at international borders “to create awareness” on January 5, BJP is also preparing the launch of its anti-drug campaign by its national president Amit Shah on January 22. Not lagging behind, Congress has also announced to stage dharnas at all district headquarters on January 5 demanding dismissal of SAD-BJP Government in Punjab headed by the Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal for inciting people against the security forces which amounted to anti-national act.
The drug issue has now turned out to be three-cornered contest with all three major political parties trying to take credit. The issue even brought the decade-old alliance partners, SAD-BJP, head-on. The BJP has upped the ante pressurising the CM to ask his tainted partymen, including Revenue Minister Majithia, and Chief Parliamentary Secretary Avinash Chander, to step down from the Government posts. BJP, training guns at its alliance partner over the drug issue though not openly, has announced to launch an anti-drug campaign from Amritsar.
Even as SAD is making all preparations to stage “peaceful” “awareness” dharna, the saffron party has found fault with the same. “SAD should not have announced to hold any demonstration to “pressurise the BSF” to stop entry of drugs from “Pakistan”…This would have amounted to an attempt to demoralise the forces deployed on the border,” said BJP national secretary Tarun Chugh in ludhiana. Reacting, SAD senior leader and spokesperson Maheshinder Singh Grewal alleged that Chugh failed to observe the established cannons of coalition dharma and his such behavior was “uncalled for and not part of protocol in coalition politics”.
Meanwhile, Chugh maintained that the BJP “certainly wants the ouster of Revenue Minister Bikram Singh Majithia...as he had been summoned by Enforcement Directorate in Rs6,000 crore drug racket case”. To this, Grewal reacted, “It is an established convention that a person holding a constitutional post can be asked to resign only if he has been convicted by a court of law. Mere summons for questioning by a central agency can never be ground for demanding anyone’s resignation. Chugh, who is in politics for some time now, is expected to know this difference and not play to the gallery on such sensitive issues purely to be in the news.”
BJP’s campaign would be launched by its national chief Amit Shah from Amritsar under the aegis of the party’s youth wing. BJP youth wing’s national president leader and MP Anurag Thakur and Punjab BJP chief Kamal Sharma are supervising the campaign. Taking advantage of the differences between the two, the State Congress president Bajwa asked the CM to explain the stand of BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on drug menace and the proposed campaign to be launched by that party’s president Amit Shah. Bajwa reminded Badal that it was the Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi who was the first to raise this issue and the Akali leaders had raised hue and cry at that time.
Denouncing Congress party over its proposed sit-ins against drugs, Badal alleged that the party did nothing to eradicate the menace during its two decades in power at the Centre and was now trying to score “brownie points” on the grave issue. The five-time CM “dared” the Congress leadership to list a “single achievement” in checking the supply of drugs from across the border while it was in power at the Centre.
“It is a well-known fact that the State Congress leaders have remained tight-lipped all these years on this grave issue…Today, when the SAD-BJP Government is working for eradicating the menace of drugs from the State, the Congress leadership is resorting to such a cheap tactic to score brownie points before media,” said Badal, while interacting with the media on the side-lines of his sangat darshan in lambi.
Badal said that the State was fighting nation’s war against drugs as Punjab was on the transit route of the drugs supplied across the globe from international border. “Due to this, the SAD has decided to initiate mass awareness campaign against drug menace in the State and as part of that protests will be held at Attari, Hussainiwala and Sadki borders on January 5,” he said.