Punjab Congress president and party candidate from Gurdaspur, Partap Singh Bajwa on Thursday alleged that the Akali Dal-BJP alliance candidate Vinod Khanna was far removed from the grass root reality and lacked vision.
He said the Aam Aadmi Party candidate from this constituency, Sucha Singh Chhotepur, lacked in commitment to the people and his politics had always been dictated by his personal interests.
Campaigning in the constituency, Bajwa said Mumbai ka Babu Khanna perhaps did not know that the situation in Punjab had worsened during the last seven years since the Akali Dal-BJP Government headed by Parkash Singh Badal came into power.
“The biggest problems facing the State were unemployment and drug addiction and both these problems had multiplied under the present Government,” he said, adding, “Khanna should know that the celluloid world was far removed from the reality and the actual life experience but the problem with him was that he continued to treat his make believe world of celluloid as a reality and hence could not come out with any real solution the people were faced with.”
Bajwa said now when the Akalis approached the people for votes in the lok Sabha elections, the people questioned them about the forgotten promises like the doubling of old age pensions, shagun schemes which continued to be meagre.
He said the problem the beneficiaries of the pension schemes were facing that whatever meagre amount had been fixed, they were not getting even that. Bajwa said nothing could be more ironic from the woes of the pensioners in the Badal villages itself who had not received their pensions for the last three months.
“If this can happen in the native village of the Chief Minister, one can visualise what will be the situation in the rest of the state. The students have not been paid their stipends and laptops. The supply of atta-daal had been irregular till the State Government hijacked the central scheme,” the PPCC chief said.
He said it was perhaps for this reason that the Akali Dal-BJP alliance was seeking votes in the name of its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi rather than on the basis of its own performance. “There was no Modi wave in the State and the people would not be misled by showing them the Modi mirage,” he added.