The slanging match between Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and his predecessor and senior Congress leader Capt Amarinder Singh over the issue of Operation Bluestar seems unending.
Taking a step further the war of words, Badal, also the SAD patron, on Monday accused the former Chief Minister Capt Amarinder for “misleading” the people on the issue. “Before questioning other people, Capt Amarinder owes an answer to the Punjabis as to why he had become the Chief Minister after joining hands with the perpetrators of Operation Bluestar,” said Badal, while talking to the reporters on the sidelines of Sangat Darshan programme of Bhoa Assembly segment.
Dubbing Capt Amarinder as “habitual of misleading people”, Badal said that it was “ironic” that he preferred to became the State Congress unit’s president and the Chief Minister despite the fact that his party had given “a severe blow to Sikh psyche by attacking Darbar Sahib and killing thousands of innocent Sikhs in the carnage of 1984”. On the contrary, Badal claimed that he was put behind bars by successive Congress Governments as he had vehemently opposed any move of the Centre against Punjab and Punjabis.
“I have thought that Capt Amarinder would have learnt lessons from his rejection by the voters of the State time and again, but his recent utterances have proved that a leopard cannot change its spots,” he said, adding “Everyone knows that the State has been a victim of continuous anti-Punjab tirades by the Centre and he was just misleading the people to score brownie points”.
Only a day before Capt Amarinder had rubbished Badal’s claim that he was in jail at the time of Operation Bluestar, saying that “either Badal has lost his memory or is deliberately lying to mislead the people”. The permanent invitee of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) had also stated that he would release documents in due course of time to establish that Badal was “very much a free man before and after Operation Bluestar and was arrested much later”.
Reacting, Badal said that it was a fact that whatever Capt Amarinder says, “the truth is always the opposite”. As the Congress high command has shown the door to Capt Amarinder, “he is making desperate attempt to appease his bosses by unleashing a malicious propaganda against his political opponents”, said Badal. Training his guns on Punjab Congress president Partap Singh Bajwa, the Chief Minister said he was also following the footsteps of his predecessor by issuing baseless statements against the State Government.
Badal said that both Capt Amarinder and Bajwa should understand that the people were against politics of vendetta and a testimony to it was the Congress’s successive defeats in the State. Chief Minister claimed that Congress leaders are “shying away” from naming party vice-president Rahul Gandhi as Prime Ministerial candidate because they “are well aware of their inevitable defeat in the ensuing general elections”.
Badal said, “There is a vast difference between BJP’s prime ministerial nominee Narendra Modi and Rahul as the former is a seasoned and decisive administrator while the latter hardly has any experience of administration.” “The people of the country are solidly behind the NDA and the writing on the wall is that Modi would become the Prime Minister after the lok Sabha polls,” he added.