Badal takes aim at Congress over ‘infighting’ for tickets

Jalandhar, December 23

Taking a jibe at state Congress leadership over a “tug of war” on ticket allocation, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Friday said the party was a “divided house” and hardly a match for Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).

He said the Congress was “basically an undisciplined party” divided into various factions, and due to this a squabble for ticket allocation was going amongst the leaders of the party.

“The pulls and pressures within the Congress were evident from the delay in its ticket allocation,” Badal said on the sidelines of his ‘Sangat Darshan’ in Kartarpur segment here.

With such intense infighting and “tug of war”, the Congress can never compete with the SAD, a cadre-based and disciplined party, he claimed.

Badal dismissed any trouble due to defection of Lok Sabha MP Sher Singh Ghubaya’s son to Congress.

“Akali Dal made Ghubaya an MLA and then an MP.

Unfortunate, that even then they were not satisfied, he said adding that shift in allegiance by them was “regrettable”.

Badal said that no “true Punjabi” could ever forgive the Congress for “sins” like the Operation Blue Star and the killing of people during the 1984 anti-Sikh carnage.

The chief minister blamed the Congress for depriving the state of its waters by constructing Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) canal.

He claimed that during the past 10 years, the SAD-BJP alliance has delivered “every promise made to people” and urged the people of the state to repose faith in the alliance government for the third consecutive term.

He claimed that that every vote for the alliance in the upcoming poll would be a vote for stability, development, peace and right governance in the state. — PTI