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Sukhpal Khaira, Bhagwant Mann among AAP leaders detained on way to CM Amarinder’s house in Chandigarh
The slogan-shouting protesters defied the prohibitory orders and tried to jump barricades set up near the MLAs’ hostel gate. The police used water cannons to disperse them, but failed. The AAP leaders were then rounded up and taken to the Sector 17 police station in two buses.
Over 60 leaders of the opposition Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Lok Insaaf Party (LIP), including several MLAs and an MP, were detained by the Chandigarh Police on Monday, after they tried to march towards Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh’s official residence to stage a dharna (sit-in).
The AAP leaders, led by leader of Opposition in Punjab assembly, Sukhpal Singh Khaira, and state unit president Bhagwant Mann, had organised the protest to seek resignation of the CM for failing to transfer the investigation into cases pertaining to Amritsar Improvement Trust and Ludhiana City Centre to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The slogan-shouting protesters defied the prohibitory orders and tried to jump barricades set up near the MLAs’ hostel gate. The police used water cannons to disperse them, but failed.
The AAP leaders were then rounded up and taken to the Sector 17 police station in two buses. They were let off after about two hours. Besides the transfer of two cases, they were protesting against the “clean chit” given to power and irrigation minister Rana Gurjit Singh in the sand mines auction controversy.
“We want Amarinder Singh to hand over the probe into these cases to the CBI for trial outside the state or quit the post of chief minister. A free and fair trial is not possible here, as everyone is being given a clean chit,” Mann, who is an MP from Sangrur, told reporters.
Khaira also said his party wants the truth to come out. “If need be, the AAP will fight these cases right up to the Supreme Court,” he insisted.
Last month, a Mohali court returned the state vigilance bureau’s cancellation report in the Amritsar Improvement Trust land scam, in which Captain Amarinder is among the accused, directing the agency to further investigate the case. The bureau had also recently given a “clean chit” to Amarinder and other accused in the Ludhiana City Centre scam.
The report is before the court now.
In the sand mines auction, a commission of inquiry headed by Justice JS Narang (retired), set up by the Congress government, recently gave a clean chit to Rana Gurjit, saying that there was no loss of revenue and the auction was carried out in a transparent manner.