Dubbing the SAD Chief’s brazen lies against the Congress-led Punjab Government as a clear sign of his desperation in the face of imminent defeat, the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Sunday asked Sukhbir Badal to be ready for another drubbing at the hands of the voters in Monday’s bypolls in the State.
Confident of yet another electoral sweep by the Congress in Punjab, Capt Amarinder ridiculed Sukhbir’s recent comments as nothing but the "rantings of a man in panic".
Reacting to Sukhbir’s allegations of no development work under the Congress regime in the state, the Chief Minister quipped that the whole of Punjab knew that the Akalis had done nothing but ruin Punjab in the 10 years of their misrule.
“You (Sukhbir) do not even know the meaning of development,” remarked Capt Amarinder, pointing out that his (Congress) Government had done more in 2.5 years than SAD and BJP had done in a decade.
By spreading falsehoods about the current regime, the Akali leader was only trying to divert attention from his own erstwhile Government’s failures, said the Chief Minister, adding that the people of Punjab had rejected the Akali lies repeatedly since the 2017 Assembly polls and were set to do so again.
Expressing surprise at Sukhbir’s interpretation of his (Capt Amarinder’s) comments on a referendum on his government’s performance, the Chief Minister wondered at the logic of the Akali practice of interpreting every election as a referendum.
“My Government needs no referendum to endorse the work done by it in the past two and a half years, and the work it continues to do for the welfare of the people and the state,” he added.
Given that his Government was just at the half-way mark of its term, the amount of work it would deliver before the end of five years is
something Sukhbir is incapable of imagining or envisaging, said the Chief Minister adding that this was what had evidently prompted the SAD chief’s desperation and frustration.
Capt Amarinder said that “for the power-hungry Badals, every election might well be a referendum, which they need to justify their existence”, but for his Government, the work done by it was a referendum in itself.
If at all a referendum has to take place, it will be in 2022, when his Govt completes its term and the Congress goes back to the voters on the development plank, said the Chief Minister, adding that the negative poll agenda of the Akalis would not yield positive results for them in any election.