Punjab Congress on Sunday called upon the Bharatiya Janata Party to listen to the voice of its conscience and come out of the Parkash Singh Badal Government.
“BJP should come out of Badal Government as this is the next logical step after making an honest observation that the drug smuggling in the State has strong political patronage,” said the State Congress president Partap Singh Bajwa.
“Punjab BJP president Kamal Sharma had only corroborated what the Congress had been maintaining all these months about the drug smuggling racket. It is the BJP which has realised the gravity and enormity of the drug menace only during the elections. BJP must draw the red lines and come out of the Government,” said Bajwa, saying that Sharma had hit the nail on the head by emphasising that all those whose names had been linked to drug smuggling, irrespective of their parties, must come clean.
“With the president of the alliance partner calling a spade a spade on this sensitive issue, it is all the more necessary that Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal must initiate action against those from his Cabinet whose names have surfaced in drug smuggling. It is now not the Congress that is levelling any allegations. The fact has been admitted by the BJP,” he added. Reiterating the demand for an immediate CBI inquiry into the drug smuggling racket under political patronage in Punjab, Bajwa demanded that the Revenue Minister Bikram Singh Majithia must be dismissed without any delay.
“With the change of Government at the Center, Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal could not extend the logic that the CBI was the Congress Bureau of Investigation,” he said.“Being an alliance partner, the BJP is an equal shareholder in all crimes with which Akali leaders are associated, from drug smuggling to mafia like control of illegal sand mining. Rather than advising Akalis to come clean, BJP must take this initiative and prove to the people that the party had strong reservations on such activities of Akali leaders and is sincere about the concerns of the people,” said BaJwa.
Bajwa said Sharma must follow up his own observation about honest introspection on the losses Akali Dal-BJP combine suffered, especially in Amritsar, in the context of comments made by BJP MlA from Amritsar East Dr Navjot Kaur Sidhu who had been trying to showcase prevailing dismal conditions to the alliance leaders.
“Sharma is not alone in making honest confession about political patronage to drug smuggling as his party’s senior leader and former minister Balramji Dass Tandon too had made a scathing attack on the politicians in this racket in league with the police,” said Bajwa, while pointing at the posts of halqa in-charges.