Amarinder focuses fire on Badals

PUNJAB ELECTIONS

July 27, 2011 11:35:39 PM

Amitabh Shukla | Chandigarh

Punjab Assembly elections may be over six months away but Captain Amarinder Singh’s body language suggests as if he has already won the elections and is on the way of becoming the Chief Minister of Punjab once again.

The President of the Punjab Congress has only abuses and contempt for his rivals and hurls them at the slightest pretext. On the firing line are obviously his Akali Dal rivals - the father son duo of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal.

“He is trying to mislead the people of Punjab…It is a complete fraud with the people of the state,” Singh said at a news conference here on Wednesday, while referring to a slew of urban reforms initiative announced by the Deputy CM at Jalandhar last week.

The Captain is not contemptuous to the Deputy CM alone. Referring to CM Badal’s criticism of Surjeet Singh Barnala and the Rajeev - Longowal pact, he said, “this (criticism) is a reflection on his (Badal’s) character. Badal has only used the events in Punjab to promote himself. He has sacrificed Punjab for personal ends.” The former Chief Minister, who had joined the Akali Dal briefly in the aftermath of Operation Bluestar in 1984, narrated some incidents from the heydays of terrorism to point out the “double character” of the septuagenarian Badal.

Captain’s verbal barbs were also directed at Sukhbir’s wife and MP from Bathinda, Harsimrat Kaur Badal. Asked in a press conference if his son Raninder Singh intended to contest the forthcoming Assembly elections, he said, “no. He (Raninder) wants to contest against… what is her name…”? Then someone prompted that it was Harsimrat. The Captain conveniently forgot it and mispronounced the name, apparently to ridicule the Badal family.

In another instance during the 50-minute long interaction with the media of the city, he attacked Vikramjit Singh Majithia, the brother in law of Sukhbir Badal on a pointed question. “They may bring in sons, daughters, grandchildren, uncles, nephews, Congress will win.”

The Captain also took a jibe at the age of the senior Badal. “My uncle studied with him in college…He is over 90…I don’t know what is his actual age though he claims to be 83,” Amarinder Singh told mediapersons at the Chandigarh Press Club on Wednesday.

Observers here say that with political discourse reaching a low, hitting below the belt has become a norm rather than an exception. The Akali Dal too has been indulging in it. But the new found obsession of the Captain with the Akalis and the Badal family has baffled the political observers here. The Badals have become the only agenda of the Congress in the run-up to the Assembly polls which has so far failed to come out with what it intends to do if and when it comes to power.

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