Capt’s tour:Chaos marks day 1

GS Paul

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, March 30

State Congress chief Capt Amarinder Singh’s interaction session with district-level party workers that held here today saw some noisy scenes.

There was so much of commotion that the star election strategist, Prashant Kishor, had to leave the venue midway without uttering a word.

The programme was aimed at gathering feedback from the workers about the shortcomings in the party structure and issues that could be part of the Congress manifesto for the 2017 Assembly elections.

Instead of highlighting the issues, the emphasis was more on fixing criteria for selecting candidates for the elections.

Amarinder’s repeated pleas to maintain discipline proved futile and ultimately he had to say “if the party loses it will be just because of indiscipline among the workers”.

A majority of the workers alleged that there was an utter disregard for the efforts of the workers at the grass-roots level. The workers demanded that new faces be given a chance as the “older ones seldom let them come forward”.

Amarinder said committees were being constituted to scrutinise the claims of ticket aspirants. “We may announce candidates six months prior to the elections. We want to give opportunities to the youth and those who have a potential to grow as good leaders but do not have any connections,” he told party workers.

On a query, he said: “The Operation Bluestar was an unfortunate development, but Punjab needs to move on. Aprobe into the riots is still on and it is wrong to blame any party for it”. Prominent among those present included OP Soni, Sukh Sarkaria and Raj Kumar Verka.