Five-time Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Wednesday cautioned the Union Government that the Congress Government in Punjab was “actively and openly in cahoots with the dangerous elements who threaten peace and communal harmony in the state”.
Badal, in a letter to the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, said that it was alarming that even the “state machinery has been put in the service of appeasement of those who openly talk about a return to the dangerous decade and half of bloodshed and hatred”.
He said that Punjab “has been brought to the brink of an explosive catastrophe” because of the “criminal laxity and negligence of those entrusted with the task of safeguarding peace in the state”.
The former Chief Minister said that the Government lacks political will and the capacity to check the forces that threaten peace and communal harmony.
Badal, in a damning indictment of the State Government, accused the ruling party of “ flirting with elements committed to the path of bloody and violent means for the achievement of their dangerous goals”.
“The Congress party’s polices and its Government in Punjab are an exact replay of the Congress conspiracies which had led to the Punjab tragedy in 1984. As in the 80s, the Congress and its government in Punjab are encouraging and promoting the forces opposed to peace. Once again, the Congress has succumbed to the temptation of using these dangerous forces to target its political opponents and to distract people’s attention from the abject failures of the State Government and from its refusal to honour its commitments to the Punjabis,” said Badal.
The Akali patriarch said that the Congress Government in Punjab has shifted “the focus from peace, communal harmony and development”, which remained the central component of the Punjab narrative during ten years of SAD-BJP government, to the “political exploitation of emotive issues”.
“I hope that the authorities in Punjab and in the government would take note of the approaching calamity and that necessary steps would be taken in time to prevent it,” he concluded.