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AAP to announce Lok Sabha candidates for Punjab seats in 2-4 days: Arvind Kejriwal
The Delhi chief minister slammed the Centre for allegedly withholding ₹8,000 crore worth of funds from Punjab. Kejriwal said if the Centre had released the funds, more roads would have been constructed, more hospitals and schools would have come up.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will announce candidates for all 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab in the next two to four days, Delhi chief minister and party national convenor Arvind Kejriwal said on Saturday.
Addressing a press conference after inaugurating 165 more Aam Aadmi Clinics across the state, Kejriwal said, “Discussion is underway, the announcement (of Lok Sabha candidates) will be made in next 2-4 days.”
Adding to this, Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann appealed to the people of Punjab to vote for AAP candidates in all 13 seats, stating, “It would strengthen our voice in the Parliament and then the central government won’t be able to block our funds.”
The Delhi chief minister also slammed the Centre for allegedly withholding ₹8,000 crore worth of funds from Punjab. Kejriwal said if the Centre had released the funds, more roads would have been constructed, more hospitals and schools would have come up.
Mann further took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘one nation, one election’ stance and asked why the PM can’t adopt a ‘one nation, one treatment’ policy.
Kejriwal said that in the last two years, unprecedented work has been done in Punjab for development of the state.
“We have done a lot of work which had not been seen in the last 75 years by the people of Punjab,” the AAP’s national convenor said.
“I am not saying all problems are solved. It will take time. But your support is needed. Like you gave 92 out of 117 seats (in Punjab assembly polls), we need the same kind of blessing in Lok Sabha polls,” he said. Punjab CM Mann, replying to a question on the potential tie-up between erstwhile allies Shiromani Akali Dal and the BJP, said the alliance was never broken.
“Did you think they are entering into an alliance again? The alliance was never really broken. But, zero plus zero is equal to zero,” he said, adding that the Akalis are hand-in-glove with the BJP whose “hands are drenched with blood of innocent farmers”. “Farmers’ issues are still unresolved and so are the issues related to state,” he said.
On development, CM Mann said that works worth ₹283 crore have been started in Jalandhar and many more are in the pipeline.
