Former Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Monday questioned “sheepish silence” of his rival in Amritsar lok Sabha constituency BJP stalwart Arun Jaitley on the plight of Sikh farmers in Gujarat who are being “selectively targeted and forcibly evicted from their lands”.
“Jaitley owes an answer not only because he is contesting from Amritsar but also because he is a Rajya Sabha member from Gujarat for the last 14 years,” said Capt Amarinder, in his statement.
He said: “Ideally, as he has been claiming himself to be a Punjabi, he should have raised the Punjabi farmers' issue with the Gujarat government long back as he enjoyed a privileged position there that is obvious from his third term as a member of the Rajya Sabha from that state, but unfortunately he has not done anything even now when he is contesting from Punjab.”
Expressing doubts whether Jaitley actually has any idea about the plight of Punjabi farmers in Gujarat, the Congress candidate from the holy city said: “I honestly don't expect him to know about such an issue since he has not indicated that he is even remotely concerned with it.”
“By coming to Punjab, Jaitley should have learnt about it by now,” he said adding that he hoped that he would use his good offices in Gujarat to help the Punjabi farmers and ensure that they were not thrown out.
Taking a dig at his successor and Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal for “totally ignoring and overlooking the sorry plight of the Punjabi farmers in Gujarat”, he said that he was not at all surprised over Badal’s silence, even though he proclaimed himself to be a messiah of farmers. “He turns blind eye at everything that does not affect his personal or family's fortunes,” said Capt Amarinder.
Dubbing Jaitley a “political mercenary” in his Facebook post, Capt Amarinder Singh said: “In election time, we often come across a number of political mercenaries. Their sole aim is to contest elections, irrespective of their commitments whether these are towards the party they belong to or the region they claim to represent.”
“My esteemed rival Arun Jaitley was born and brought up in Delhi, where he has a well-settled lucrative legal practice. But he has been consecutively elected to the Rajya Sabha during the last three terms in 2000, 2006 and 2012 from Gujarat,” he said. “And now, he has been made to contest, rather more by the Akalis who wanted to get rid of (Navjot Singh) Sidhu than the BJP, from the holy city of Amritsar,” read Capt Amarinder’s post.