Skeletons are tumbling out of politicians’ closet as Gurdaspur lok Sabha bypoll brings out the “murky” side of politics. Just about five days before the election, clips of private lives of politicians are finding their way into the mobiles and laptops of the common man.
Video clips and photographs of no less than three leaders from the prominent political parties in objectionable position have went viral in the virtual world, while similar allegations were levelled against another senior leader.
Things started with a former woman employee emerging on the Gurdaspur battlefield and charging the Shiromani Akali Dal district unit head Sucha Singh lagah with rape, cheating, extortion, and criminal intimidating her.
Amidst all this, a video clip of former Akali Minister and Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) member langah in compromising position with a woman did the rounds — giving much fodder to the ruling Congress party to target the SAD-BJP combine.
lagah was booked by the Gurdaspur — development he termed as a classic example of political vendetta. As his parent party expelled him. On run for five days, langah finally surrendered before the Gurdaspur court on Wednesday.
The focus was then shifted on SAD-BJP combine candidate for Gurdaspur bypoll and a Mumbai’s business tycoon Swaran Salaria.
Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Badal targeted Salaria for “concealing” an information of a pending rape case against him in Mumbai in his nomination papers, as required under the Representation of People’s Act.
The Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) come together on a common platform seeking cancellation of Salaria’s candidature for the same, while the BJP leader charged the ruling party of “distracting” people for covering up its failures to fulfil even single poll promise it made ahead of Assembly polls.
As the BJP nominee denied the allegations, the “victim” released her pictures with Salaria showing the two in intimate positions.
In between, rape allegations were levelled against senior Congress leader and Batala’s former MlA Ashwani Sekhri by his maid — which lost in the din, and could not be proved.
Now, latest in the list is senior Congress leader and former MlA from Amritsar East constituency Jasbir Singh Dimpa, known to be close to Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh.
A three-minute video clip, said to be over 18-20 years old, has invaded the social media showing Dimpa in objectionable position with a female. At the same time, Dimpa has categorically rubbished it.
On one hand where the political parties are taking advantage of the developments against each other, the political observers, on the other hand, believed that all these things are not setting a good example.
“Politics is known to be a dirty business…But, it is getting filthier. leaders should contest polls on people’s issues, their problems, and not on things like this. It’s right to question their character, but targeting only on this is bad politics,” a senior political expert told The Pioneer.
Disagreeing, a senior Congress leader maintained, “People’s representative should be honest, having impeccable character, and competent…When incidents like these come in front of the people, they get to know about the real face of the political party which has all along been garnering votes in the name of religion.”
“langah was the member of SGPC’s dharam prachar committee…do you want people to vote such double-faced leaders who preach something and do exactly the opposite,” added the Congress leader, who did not wish to be named.
With just five days left for October 11 bye-elections, it is yet to see how many more skeletons would tumble out of how many leaders.