Giving a clarion call to the party rank and file to gear up for 2017 Assembly elections without any delay, Punjab Congress president Partap Singh Bajwa on Wednesday reiterated the party’s demand for CBI probe into drug smuggling racket.
“The issue concerns the destiny of the people in general and the youth in particular in this sensitive border State,” said Bajwa while addressing a dharna at Jalandhar as part of party’s statewide protest against Akali Dal-BJP Government.
Bajwa asserted, “2017 would see Congress in saddle in Punjab by replacing this most corrupt, non-performing and degenerated Government. People are already filled up with anger and they are waiting for the day they would get rid of this inefficient Government which has put the once most prosperous State in reverse gear while the family fortunes of the ruling Badal family have multiplied hundreds of times during this period.”
Slamming the Badal Government as ‘Government of looters’, Bajwa called upon the people to start mobilisation without any loss of time. Reminding Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal of alleging discrimination and step-motherly treatment at the hands of UPA Government, Bajwa said: “It is your own Government in power at the Centre now but still there is no sign that Punjab has started getting ‘motherly’ treatment.”
Badal had been giving the impression that with the change of Government at the Centre, Punjab would start getting truckloads of money. “People are waiting for those trucks and wanted to know whether the same have been diverted to some other destination,” he quipped. Taking the Badal Government to task for rampant corruption and administrative paralysis, Bajwa said that the extent to which law and order had deteriorated could be gauged from the fact that even the mother of the Hoshiarpur MP Vijay Sampla was robbed in Jalandhar.
Referring to worsening power situation, he said that State was suffering long power cuts contrary to the tall claims being made over the years by Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal of making Punjab power surplus and exporting power to Pakistan. Congress party organised dharnas across the State at district headquarters and memorandum were submitted to the respective deputy commissioners.
In ludhiana, AICC secretary Harish Chaudhary and ludhiana MP Ravneet Bittu led the Congressmen in protest against the State Government. Former Chief Minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal led the dharna at Bathinda and former Union Minister Preneet Kaur at Patiala along with laal Singh and Brahm Mohindra. At all other district headquarters, the protests were led by MlAs, ex-MlAs and the district presidents.