A day after Punjab Cabinet Ministers asked renowned advocate HS Phoolka to return the Padma Shri award in protest against the CBI closure report in Bargari sacrilege case instead of instigating state legislators to resign, the former MLA on Monday said the he was ready to do so “that was the pre-condition for arresting former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and former DGP Sumedh Singh Saini in the Behbal Kalan police firing incident case”.
“I was awarded Padma Shri for leading legal battle of victims of 1984 Sikh massacre in Delhi. I will return the award very next day, when the Government will put Badal and Saini behind bars,” declared Phoolka.
Protesting against the government’s “inaction” in sacrilege cases, Phoolka had resigned from the Punjab Vidhan Sabha last year, and his resignation was finally accepted by the Speaker Rana KP Singh on Friday only after Phoolka threatened to move the Supreme Court against the delay in acceptance of the resignation.Phoolka then asked the five other MLAs, including Navjot Singh Sidhu, Sukhjinder Randhawa, Simrajit Singh Bains who raised the sacrilege issue, also to resign from the Vidhan Sabha.
However, reacting to Phoolka’s resignation, Punjab Cabinet Ministers Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa, Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, Sukbinder Singh Sarkaria and Gurpreet Singh Kangar, in a joint statement issued on Sunday, called it a mere a “political stunt”.
The ministers had challenged Phoolka that if he was genuinely concerned about the issue and its implications, he should have returned the Padma Shri awarded to him by the BJP government, which had pressurised the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into filing a closure report in the sensitive Bargari case.
Reacting to the Minister’s statement, Phoolka maintained that if returning Padma Shri is “pre-condition” to arrest Badal and Saini, “I am even ready for that”.He alleged that the Punjab Government wanted the Justice Ranjit Singh Commission to die a slow death, which he won’t let happen.