Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal today said Punjab chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh was acting like an arrogant ‘Raja’ who could do no wrong by refusing cooperation from any political party to fight the scourge of drugs even as his failure to take action himself was leading Punjab into an abyss.
In a statement here, the former Deputy chief minister and SAD president said “I have observed restraint since the last one week and tried to goad you to wake up from your slumber and take affirmative action. Instead of doing that you have tried to deflect attention from your government’s abject failure by coming up with stunts like dope tests. You have even offered to subject yourself to a dope test little understanding what message it will send to Punjabis worldwide – that even you are suspect. You have in the process exposed our sisters and mothers by indulging in such gimmicks, little realizing that the real culprits will go scot free in the process”.
Reasoning with the chief minister that he should not point fingers at those who were trying to help Punjab and Punjabis, the former Deputy CM said Capt Amarinder should instead reflect how the present sorry state of affairs came about. “It is your party president Rahul Gandhi who gave a false statement that 70 per cent of Punjabi youth are drug addicts. Instead of correcting this impression keeping in view the welfare of the State you put your stamp of approval on it and tom-tommed it even further. Why did you indulge in such political opportunism then and not offer your cooperation to the SAD-BJP government to jointly fight this menace as I have done now?”, the SAD president asked.
Reminding Amarinder that he had sworn on the holy ‘Gutka’ to eradicate drugs from Punjab within four weeks of assuming power, the SAD president said “it is amply clear that you failed to keep this promise. Now when the SAD has offered to help you in this task you are treating the offer with arrogance instead of the seriousness it deserves. “I did not want to show you to mirror but the truth is that your own legislators (Surjit Singh Dhiman) and recently former minister Rana Gurjit have been warning you continuously about the increase in drug incidence. Convictions under the NDPS act have gone down with more than 900 acquittals taking place during the last six months. The police department is under a cloud. Your own Pradesh Congress president has admitted that one tainted police officer is replacing the other. There seems to be no political will from your side to end this scourge. This is why the offer of help was extended”.
Telling Amarinder that he was in government, Mr Badal said he should stop passing the buck now. “People expect you to take concrete action at the ground level and deliver results. You can’t keep trying to offload your failures on others. The buck stops with you now”.
Mr Badal said the SAD-BJP on its part never denied the problem of drugs. “In fact we launched the war on drugs under the leadership of S Parkash Singh Badal and established drug de-addiction centres. Now it was for you to initiate a rehabilitation package for d-addicted youth which you have failed to do. Even now you have not come out with a time bound road-map to deal with this menace and only seem to be interested in running down the opposition. It would be better for you to pull up your socks, go to your office for a change, take stock of the situation and get cracking”.
