The Punjab BJP on Tuesday maintained that its demand of resignation by its ally Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader and Chief Parliamentary Secretary Avinash Chander for his alleged involvement in the multi-crore drug case is “right”, and it would stick to it.
“Our demand for the Avinash Chander’s resignation is right and we would continue to demand his resignation in future also,” said the State BJP president Kamal Sharma, after inaugurating the call centre for party's ongoing membership drive in the state at party office in Chandigarh’s Sector-37.
Taking a tough stand on the drug menace in Punjab, the saffron party has all along been pressurising its alliance partners and Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to ask its leader to put in his papers from the post of CPS on moral grounds to facilitate fair probe.
The party has been asking Avinash Chander to resign from his post “since his name has cropped up in the infamous case related to dismissed Punjab Police DSP and drug-lord Jagdish Bhola”.
BJP is of the view that Chander’s continuation as CPS in the SAD-BJP government would have an impact on the already-declined image of the alliance government and raises doubts about the government's intention to act against the drug mafia.
The demand was made by the BJP after the Enforcement Directorate had summoned the CPS. The party maintained that ED sleuths might have some basic evidence against him, that was why he was summoned for interrogation.
The party also maintained that when the former cabinet minister Sarwan Singh Phillaur can quit the Cabinet after name of his son Damanvir Singh cropped up in the same case, why cannot he be asked to step down.