Chandigarh: A day after AAP staged a protest here, Punjab Congress chief Capt Amarinder Singh has said the ruling Akali Dal was deliberately trying to promote Arvind Kejriwal’s party with the hope of dividing anti-incumbency votes during the next year’s Assembly elections.
He contended that there was a subtle understanding between the Akali Dal and the AAP “as was proved yesterday during the so-called gherao” of the Punjab Chief Minister’s residence here.
Referring to yesterday’s AAP protest against the SAD-BJP government, the former Chief Minister said, they (the Akalis and the AAP) were only playing a “friendly match” as they are feeling threatened by the Congress. “The Akali Dal is deliberately trying to promote the AAP in the hope of dividing anti-incumbency votes, which will otherwise straightway go to the Congress,” he told a meeting of newly-appointed vice presidents, general secretaries and district presidents of the party here. The AAM yesterday held protest at Mohali near here against the alleged multi-crore foodgrain scam in Punjab and demanded a Supreme Court-monitored SIT probe into the issue. Amarinder Singh questioned how some of the AAP workers were allowed to reach the CM’s residence despite heavy deployment of police on the entry points. “While the Akalis tried to project that they were preventing the AAP workers from coming to Chandigarh, actually the police personnel facilitated their entry to the state capital,” he said. While questioning how the Akali government gave permission to the AAP workers to gather at Mohali, the Congress leader said in contrast, when the youth Congress workers were marching towards Chandigarh airport recently for getting it named after Bhagat Singh, they were brutally lathicharged with so many of them suffering injuries and fractures. Expressing confidence that the Congress would come back to power in Punjab after next year’s polls, he said, “no matter how much the Akalis try to encourage and support the AAP, people of Punjab have already realised that vote for the AAP will mean vote for the Akali Dal which does not augur well for the state.” With regard to today’s results in the Delhi municipal bye elections in which the AAP won from 5 out of 13 wards, Amarinder Singh saw it as a reflection of “popular sentiment” being against the ruling party of Delhi. “The bye elections may have been held for 13 wards only, but the results are certainly indicators of the popular sentiment in Delhi, which is clearly against the AAP,” he said. “Of the 13 municipal wards, AAP lost in 8, thus reflecting the popular disillusionment with the Kejriwal government in Delhi within a year,” the senior Congress leader said He congratulated the Delhi PCC president Ajay Maken and his team for the good performance by winning four seats in the Municipal polls. — PTI
