New Delhi: Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal on Friday lashed out at Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convener Arvind Kejriwal describing his five day ongoing visit to the state as “Nautanki” (drama).
“Kejriwal did not bother to visit Haryana where he belongs to when the state is burning because of Jat reservation agitation,” Sukhbir said adding in Punjab he is “shedding crocodile tears” at the houses of some farmers who committed suicides years ago. He alleged the Kejriwal government has “totally failed” in Delhi where they had only spent or earmarked crores of money for self advertisement programmes.
Kejriwal had promised to install 2 lakh CCTV cameras for safety of the city there but had installed only two hundred of them, Sukhbir alleged. “Now he is trying to be fool the people of Punjab in the name of Aam Admi of whom he was least bothered,” Sukhbir said. Sukhbir said that he was neither “panicky” nor did he “lack confidence” in suggesting that Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal would lead the Akali BJP alliance at the next state assembly elections and form the government.
“Working under Badal’s leadership was like a lesson at Harvard University,” Sukhbir said. He also scotched all rumours of any break in the Akali BJP alliance and described it as as an alliance for the state which would never see any divorce. In Chandigarh, SAD Secretary and Punjab Education Minister Daljit Singh Cheema alleged that the language used by Kejriwal against the Akalis is “highly derogatory, condemnable and amounts to a personal attack” on each and every worker of the Shiromani Akali Dal.
Had Kejriwal been little bit aware of the Akali/Sikh history he would not have “committed this blunder” of calling the “real lions” as “gidders” (wolfs), he said. Cheema told Kejriwal to stop using such “insulting, abusive and inflammatory” language and urged him to tender an unconditional public apology.
Making mockery of Kejriwal’s claim on “removing corruption” from Punjab if AAP is voted to power within two months, the SAD leader said that it was surprising that “corruption” was “flourishing” under his government in Delhi and “surpassed even the previous record” but he is making “tall and hollow” promises to Punjabis only to lure them to vote for the AAP.