E-Paper
'Double standards': AAP says BJP taking Cong's ‘kachra’ after four leaders switch camps
Former ministers and Congress leaders Raj Kumar Verka, Sundar Sham Arora, Gurpreet Kangar, and Balbir Sidhu - joined the BJP in presence of Union home minister Amit Shah, in Punjab on Saturday.
A day after four former Congress ministers joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Punjab, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) said the saffron camp that used to talk about a “Congress-mukt Bharat (Congress-free India)” is itself becoming a “Congress-yukt (filled with Congress)” one.
At a press briefing on Sunday, AAP’s Punjab unit chief spokesperson Malvinder Singh Kang accused the BJP of double standards, stating that it welcomed many Congress leaders against whom it had leveled several charges a day ago.
“The BJP talks about ideology. Has it failed to create leadership in Punjab for so many years or are its leaders not competent that it has to take Congress' kachra (garbage),” Kang was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
On Saturday, former ministers and Congress leaders Raj Kumar Verka, Sundar Sham Arora, Gurpreet Kangar, and Balbir Sidhu - joined the BJP. Former Congress MLA Kewal Singh Dhillon and former Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) MLAs Sarup Chand Singla and Mohinder Kaur Josh also joined the saffron camp.
Also Read | Amarinder Singh's warning as 4 Punjab ex ministers join BJP: ‘Tip of iceberg'
Kang said that going by the trend over the last few years, the reality is the “opposite” of what the BJP had said before about making India free of Congress.
He further said that BJP leader Tikshan Sud had levelled allegations of corrupt practices against Sham Arora, and now the party inducted “rejected leaders” into its fold. He said that similar allegations were slapped against by the BJP against Balbir Sidhu, who was the health minister in the then Amarinder Singh-headed government.
"The people of Punjab know their reality. They have already been rejected by people in the polls," Kang was quoted in the PTI report.
Ahead of the Punjab assembly election that was held earlier this year, AAP supremo and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had said that many leaders from the Congress party were in touch with his side but it would not take their kachra (garbage)".
(With agency inputs)
