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Lok Sabha elections 2019: Preneet Kaur left red-faced after Congress admits gangster into party
Gangster Randeep Singh, who is facing charges of attempted murder, robbery and illegal possession of arms was arrested in 2016 but managed to get bail in 2017.
Left red-faced after a gangster joined the Congress last week, Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh’s wife and the party’s candidate from Patiala Lok Sabha constituency, Preneet Kaur said on Monday that the incident was neither deliberate nor condonable and insisted that the grand old party has zero tolerance to criminalisation of politics.
Gangster Randeep Singh, who is facing charges of attempted murder, robbery and illegal possession of arms was arrested in 2016 but managed to get bail in 2017. He is also accused of helping another gangster Dilpreet Singh Baba escape from police custody in Ropar.
Preneet Kaur , a former Union minister, said he would not be allowed to remain a member of the Congress at any cost.
Randeep Singh had joined the party in Patiala at a function last week as part of a group of some 1500 Panjab University students and she herself was not aware of his criminal antecedents, she said in a statement.
“When hundreds of people are joining the Congress in one go, it becomes difficult to vet each of them,” said Preneet, adding that now that Randeep’s background had been brought to her notice, she would personally ensure that he is thrown out of the party. “The law would take its course as far as the criminal cases against the gangster were concerned,” she said.
The gangster’s entry into the party had given ample ammunition to opposition Shiromani Akali Dal, AAP and PDA to accuse Preneet and the Congress of favouring gangsters.
But Preneet pointed out that Randeep had been a supporter of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the past, and said the gangster had evidently found an easy way to foray into politics by projecting himself as a student and a political activist.
“Criminals have no place in any political party,” she said and urged all parties, including SAD and AAP, to be more cautious in this regard. The Congress, on its part, would take steps to become even more vigilant, and further tighten its screening framework before admitting anyone into the party, she said.
Criminalisation of politics had, in fact, been a key plank of the Congress in the 2017 Assembly elections, Preneet recalled and pointed out that the politician-gangster nexus had made the lives of the people of Punjab a living hell during the SAD-BJP rule. Allegations of political patronage to gangsters and hardened criminals were rampant during the previous regime, she said, asking the Akalis to focus more on monitoring their own activities than on accusing the Congress of “trying to win the Lok Sabha elections by hook or by crook.”
