You could have averted farmers’ crisis, no moral right to speak now: Punjab CM to Harsimrat

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 15

Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Wednesday said no Akali leader, especially former Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal, had the moral right to speak on the crisis triggered by the Farm Laws, which they could easily have averted when they were part of the central government and party to each of its anti-people decisions.

In a response to Harsimrat’s “irresponsible claims and baseless allegations” against him with reference to his statement on the impact of the prolonged farmers’ stir in Punjab on the state’s economy, the Chief Minister slammed the Akali leader over her politically motivated remarks which were nothing but a cover-up of her and her party’s failure to prevent the crisis that was of their own deliberate making.

Ridiculing the former union minister’s remarks that he (Capt Amarinder) was speaking the language of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership and the Prime Minister, the Chief Minister said left to the ruling party at the Centre and in neighbouring Haryana, the farmers would not have even reached the Delhi borders to make their voice heard. “I never asked the farmers to go to Delhi. They were forced to leave their homes and sit at the border of the national capital, facing the elements and even losing their lives, as a result of your coalition government’s acts of commission and omission,” he said.

Dubbing as atrocious Harsimrat’s suggestion that the farmers should protest in Punjab while their fight was against the BJP-led government at the Centre, the Chief Minister quipped “it’s like asking someone to go to the western front to fight an enemy that is standing at the eastern border.”

Taking a dig at Harsimrat’s claim of being “surprised and pained” at his remarks, the Chief Minister said either the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader was deliberately lying or was totally dumb and apathetic to the plight of the state and its people.

As for not taking the farmers’ fight to the Centre, the Chief Minister advised Harsimrat to ask her media team to search out the press reports of his personal visits, meetings, letters and phone calls to the Prime Minister, the Union Home Minister and other central government ministers on the issue over the past one year.

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