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Political stunts won’t help: Capt on SAD’s move to hold dharnas
Chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Saturday termed the Shiromani Akali Dal’s announcement to hold dharnas in the wake of over the power tariff hike and murders of two former SAD sarpanches as a “shameless political stunt”. In a statement, the CM dubbed the Akali Dal’s call to take on the government on these two issues as mere theatrics and said these were aimed at covering up their own trail of misdeeds and mis-governance of 10 years, and their continued efforts to promote their political interests.
Chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Saturday termed the Shiromani Akali Dal’s announcement to hold dharnas in the wake of over the power tariff hike and murders of two former SAD sarpanches as a “shameless political stunt”.
In a statement, the CM dubbed the Akali Dal’s call to take on the government on these two issues as mere theatrics and said these were aimed at covering up their own trail of misdeeds and mis-governance of 10 years, and their continued efforts to promote their political interests.
Lashing out at the Akali leadership over their threat of agitation if the killers of former Akali sarpanches Baba Gurdeeep Singh and Dalbir Singh Dhilwan are not arrested within a week, Amarinder said the Punjab Police, under the present regime, was doing a much better job at solving crime cases than it ever had under the erstwhile SAD-BJP rule.
Amarinder pointed out that when in power, the SAD government had failed to trace even a single case of the serial targeted killings that began in January 2016, including that of Punjab unit RSS vice-president Jagdish Gagneja. Many hardcore “A” category gangsters, such as Vicky Gounder and Prema Lahoria, had a complete free run of the state under their rule, which was marked by jungle raj, he added.
In fact, said the chief minister, the SAD-BJP government had specialised in transferring all difficult cases to the CBI, be it the serial killings of RSS and Hindu leaders or gangster crimes, or the various Namdhari cases, including of the sect matriarch Chand Kaur.
He said despite this pathetic legacy of total collapse of law and order inherited from the Akalis, his government had made major breakthroughs in cracking various high-profile cases, while ensuring peace and security for the citizens of Punjab, the CM said.
“Why don’t you check out your own track record before lashing out at us,” he told the SAD, citing figures to show that the percentage increase during their regime, from 2007 to 2017, was much more than what his government had implemented. The total power tariff hike under their (SAD-BJP) rule was 22.51% in 2006-07 over 2001-02, 42.13% in 2011-12 over 2006-07, 24.77% 2016-17 over 2011-12, as against a mere 13.69% in 2019-20 over 2016-17, the Chief Minister pointed out.
The Akalis did not increase tariff and FCA (fuel cost adjustment) surcharge for 2015-16 and, in fact, reduced it by -0.65 % during 2016-17 in view of the assembly elections. As a result, the increase (9.33%) during 2017-18 was slightly more, but it went down to 2.17% and 1.78% in 2017-18 and 2018-19, respectively, he said.
