Officials interrupt meet of sulking Cong men

Archit Watts

Tribune News Service

Malout, April 21

The authorities and the police on Sunday interrupted a meeting of some Congress leaders who are apparently unhappy with local MLA Ajaib Singh Bhatti, who is also the Deputy Speaker.

The meeting was being held at the residence of a Congress man at Danewala village near here when cops and election officials all of a sudden reached the spot and stopped the public address system.

Irate over it, Congress men objected to it and continued their meeting without addressing from the mike. Nearly 150 Congress men, including chairmen, ex-chairmen, sarpanches and ex-sarpanches, were present at the meeting. The Congress men said they were not campaigning in favour of any candidate, but holding their own meeting.

“The police and election officials trespassed into a house and they even failed to show us any letter in this regard. If we had violated any law, they should have shown us the Act or some letter issued by the District Election Officer. It happened just at the behest of some party leaders,” they added.

Meanwhile, they formed a 31-member committee to decide on whether to support Congress candidate from the Ferozepur parliamentary constituency Sher Singh Ghubaya.

“We are Congressmen and will remain in future as well. However, our local MLA has never given us respect or invited to any party programme in the past two years. We will decide future course of action when Ghubaya will hold a meeting with our newly formed committee,” said a sulking Congress leader.

He said if the meeting with Ghubaya did not prove to be successful, they would hold a roadshow or organise a meeting in some hall to expose the functioning of Bhatti. Notably, these sulking Congress men had earlier too held a meeting in this regard on April 13.

On the other hand, Bhatti has already dismissed the allegations of disrespecting or ignoring them.