Vowing to “fight till the end and emerge victorious”, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Badal on Sunday accused Congress chief Sonia Gandhi of being the “real face behind the conspiracy to divide and weaken the Sikh community”.
Sukhbir, also Punjab Deputy Chief Minister, has maintained that the decision to form a separate committee to manage Sikh affairs was not in the ambit of the Haryana government while describing the announcement for its formation by Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda as the “last gambit by a drowning man who would soon be consigned to the dust bin of history”.
“The Haryana government could not form a separate committee and it is unfortunate that Hooda has gone in for cheap theatrics by making this announcement at Kaithal today. The real face behind the conspiracy to divide and weaken the Sikh community is not Hooda but Congress president Sonia Gandhi,” he said. “All others are just being used as pawns…It is Sonia Gandhi who had authored this move. It is unfortunate and condemnable that the Gandhi family led by Sonia Gandhi is unable to let go of its visceral hatred towards the Sikh community despite the fact that it is the Sikh community which has been victimized at their hands”, he added. Reminding the Congress president that things had changed, Sukhbir said: “The Sikh community will never tolerate this interference in its religious affairs and this conspiracy to divide the Sikh community will never succeed.”
Sukhbir said that it was shameful that the Congress party had tried to give a cloak of legitimacy to the move by engineering support for the move and parading failed and discredited Sikh leaders. “It is also extremely unfortunate that Sikh leaders have stooped to becoming stooges of Sonia Gandhi and trying to create a wedge in their own community,” he added.
He said that both state Congress president Partap Singh Bajwa and former Delhi Sikh Management Committee president Paramjit Singh Sarna have proved themselves to be “modern day Mir Jaffars” who were hell bent on destroying their own community. “Bajwa has been forced to become part of the conspiracy because he has become a political non-entity having lost the last lok Sabha elections and now is completely dependent on the Gandhi family for his survival. Sarna is the same man who does not believe in the Akal Takht and is rejected by the Sikhs of Delhi after it was revealed that he was a Congress agent,” he said.