PM’s nuke war statement ''highly irresponsible'', says Amarinder

Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, April 22

Lambasting Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his “highly irresponsible” statement on India’s nuclear arsenal, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Monday appealed to the people to support the Congress party’s “war for the nation”.

Speaking to the press after he accompanied his party’s Jalandhar nominee Santokh Singh Chaudhary to file nomination papers at the District Administrative Complex, the chief minister said that the prime minister’s threat to trigger a nuclear war was an election rhetoric.

The chief minister was accompanied, among others, by former Jalandhar MP Mohinder Singh Kaypee, whose house he visited.

“He (Kaypee) is a senior leader, an old Congressman who will be campaigning wholeheartedly for the party,” he said, rejecting any anger on the part of the ex-MP. Cabinet minister Sunder Sham Arora and ex-minister Rana Gurjeet Singh also accompanied the chief minister, along with a large number of party workers and supporters.

Gulshan Sharma, who had contested on AAP ticket from Jalandhar North in the 2017 Assembly elections, joined the Congress. Captain Amarinder welcomed him into the party with the confidence that he would help further strengthen the Congress in Jalandhar.

“This is a jung for the future of the nation. We are fighting a party that made tall promises but failed to deliver on even a single one of them,” the chief minister said later, addressing a public meeting at the PUDA grounds here. He lashed out at the BJP for ruining the nation with its anti-people policies, such as demonetization, GST etc.

He mocked BJP’s ‘acche din’ slogan and said unemployment rate was at an all-time high in the country, adding: “’Acche din’ will come only when their rule is brought to an end”.

Captain Amarinder also criticised the Prime Minister for his “blatant and shameful politicisation of the armed forces”,

“The Army and the forces are not his personal property. Any government of the day would have done what he did in the wake of the Pulwama attack. Every day, army and paramilitary personnel are dying in the line of duty, and yet the prime minister has the audacity to take credit for their actions,” he said.

The chief minister also criticised the BJP for its decision to field Hindu leader Pragya Thakur, saying she was opening making hate speeches and “insulting the men in uniform”.

“Such people are deliberately being given tickets by BJP in order to divide the people of India,” he said, asserting that the people would not allow the ruling party to destroy the nation’s peaceful fabric to promote their petty political interests.