lashing out at the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) president Sunil Jakhar, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Monday said that it was a matter of shame that he was casting aspersions on a respected institution like PGIMER Chandigarh in his “desperation” to defend Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s “blatant lie” that 70 per cent Punjab youth were drug addicts.
“Sunil Jakhar should be ashamed of himself for indulging in mud-slinging against the PGIMER…By doing so, he has put himself in the camp of anti-Punjab forces who have constantly tried to malign the State’s youth by branding them as drug addicts,” said a former minister and SAD spokesperson Maheshinder Singh Grewal.
Asking Jakhar not to sweep the floor after Rahul Gandhi despite political compulsions, including his dependence on the latter to contest the forthcoming parliamentary by-poll from Gurdaspur, Grewal said the PPCC chief must realise that he was also answerable to the youth of Punjab.
Grewal asked Jakhar to come clean and tell the youth whether he believed that 70 per cent of them were drug addicts. If not, he must immediately apologise to them on behalf of the Congress instead of trying to confuse the issue by indulging in deceit, he said.
SAD leader also asked Jakhar to tell Punjabis why he was deliberately degrading top institutions, including the Army. “Before the PGIMER survey which asserted that only 0.9 per cent Punjabis are drug addicts, the AIIMS, Delhi also conducted a survey in 2016 and came out with figure of 0.84 per cent drug incidence. Earlier, the Baba Farid Health Sciences University found only 1.27 per cent of 3.76 lakh candidates applying for police recruitment indulging in drugs,” he said.
He added, “The Indian Army’s Deputy Director General, Recruitment, has gone on record to say that there was negligent drug addiction among thousands of youth applying for recruitment in the army.”
Jakhar should clear his stand on all these surveys and tell if the AIIMS, Baba Farid University and army authorities are also lying about incidence of drug addiction in PunjabIJ he asked, asking him to study the extent of drug incidence himself in his village or Abohar town.