Quit or wind up businesses, Congress tells ruling Badals

Tribune News Service 

Moga/Chandigarh, May 3

Citing conflict of interest, Congress leader Amarinder Singh today said Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal should either resign or shut down his transport and other businesses, days after death of a girl after being shoved off from a bus owned by the ruling family.

The Congress' Deputy Leader in Lok Sabha alleged that number of Badal family-owned buses has increased from 40 to 250 since they came to power and they threatened into submission all other transporters as well as Punjab Roadways.

"All these years, in a clear case of conflict of interest, you have brutally abused your position and power and multiplied your fleet of buses from 40 to 250 by threatening and bullying not only other private transporters, but also the PRTC (Pepsu Road Transport Corporation) and Punjab Roadways into submission.

"It has eventually led to everybody except you suffering huge losses while you are making huge profits," he told Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal in a statement issued here.

The former Chief Minister alleged that while the Badals have grabbed about 250 route permits, most of these forcibly, they were actually plying about 500 buses on all the profit making routes.

Punjab Congress president Partap Singh Bajwa said the suspension of Orbit bus service by Deputy CM Sukhbir Badal on the plea of sending the staff on orientation course had vindicated the party’s stand that the company had recruited rogue elements.

Bajwa along with Indian Youth Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, former Chief Minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, former MLAs Rakesh Pandey, Darshan Singh Brar, Inderjit Singh Zira and other leaders participated in a three-hour-long dharna at the Civil Hospital. The leaders were accompanied by a large number of Congress workers, besides the family and relatives of the victim.  (With PTI inputs)