Sukhbir: Cong plotting protests to discredit us

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 16

Amid growing incidents of Akali meetings being disrupted, party president Sukhbir Badal has accused the Congress of engineering protests to create an anti-Akali and anti-Badal political narrative.

Blaming Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh and state party chief Sunil Jakhar for “plotting these incidents to prove that the SAD is discredited”, Sukhbir said the Congress was repeating history. “In the early 1980s, the then Congress government had resorted to similar tactics, which had led to a long period of turmoil and militancy in the state. The Congress is again playing a dangerous game by hobnobbing with radical elements,” he alleged.

Sukhbir said all this was being done to ensure that they did not venture out to highlight the “failures” of the Congress government, be it farm crisis, SC scholarships or recruitment of teachers. “In the 10 years of the SAD-BJP rule, we had kept their (radical elements’) activities under check,” he claimed.

As many as six incidents have been reported in the past month and a half, where senior Akali leaders were escorted out of public functions by cops after some people either tried to attack them or waived black flags at them. All such incidents were targeted at the Badals.

An alleged plot to assassinate Akali Dal patriarch Parkash Singh Badal too has been unraveled by the Meerut police on Monday. All these incidents have been reported after the Justice Ranjit Singh Commission report was made public. The Commission has blamed the Akali-BJP government for not doing enough to solve sacrilege cases and for using force against Sikh protesters.

Sukhbir denied that there was a ground swell against the Akalis. “Had it been so, how come thousands of people attended our rallies at Fazilka, Faridkot and Patiala? Isn’t it strange that the Z plus security is being breached and the police either let go of the accused or delay registration of FIRs against them?” he alleged.