Coming down heavily on the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Wednesday termed Aam Aadmi Party’s national convener’s visit to Chandigarh as a “sinister media stunt” staged with the sole purpose of befooling the people of Delhi, Punjab as well as the country.
“The visit itself is a flop show as it does not yield anything,” said Punjab’s former Finance Minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa, addressing a press conference.
He said that Kejriwal was in the habit of inventing a make belief solution to the problems being faced by the people of Delhi. “last year, he came up with the odd-even scheme and spent crores of rupees on a media blitz to take political mileage of the same. This year, he has come up with the idea of meeting the chief ministers of Haryana and Punjab with the sole purpose of flogging these meetings as an achievement,” he said.
Dhindsa said that the result of the meeting with Haryana Chief Minister Manohar lal Khattar was there for all to see. “All Kejriwal could say after the meeting with his Haryana counterpart was that concern had been expressed about health issues due to stubble burning. Kejriwal could have expressed this sentiment on the phone but chose to indulge in cheap publicity on this sensitive issue even though he knew that the talks with his Haryana counterpart would not have any outcome,” he said.
Pointing that stubble burning alone was not responsible for the smog in Delhi, Dhindsa said: “If that was so, Chandigarh would have been the worst sufferer.”
“The truth is that Kejriwal has failed to check vehicular pollution and is now trying to blame the farmers of Punjab and Haryana for his own failures. If he is really serious about this issue he should provide financial assistance to Punjab and Haryana to tackle stubble burning. Agriculture equipment and even establishment of bio \mass plants can provide a lasting solution to utilize paddy straw,” he added.
Asking Kejriwal to desist from deceit, Dhindsa said that he should first tell the people what he had done to reduce the effect of smog in Delhi.
Stating that this as well as other instances were indicative of the double speak of AAP on every sensitive issue concerning Punjab, Dhindsa said that recently, the party’s Punjab unit had held a symbolic photo-op to protest passage of water from Punjab to Rajasthan even as Kejriwal was demanding that Punjab’s waters be given to Delhi through the SYl canal.
“You recently even did the same on the issue of drugs by choosing to remain silent when your legislature party leader Sukhpal Khaira was summoned as an accused in an international drug racket in which his co-accused had already been awarded a 20 year jail sentence,” he said.