Jaito, March 31
Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Badal today held both the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) governments responsible for doing politics on the issue of sacrilege even as he asked why both governments had not taken stringent action in cases of sacrilege and why out of 597 cases there had been only 44 convictions. The SAD president was reacting to a news report which stated that Punjab had suffered 597 incidents of sacrilege in the last ten years, but there had been only 44 convictions and 99 acquittals.
Addressing a mammoth gathering here as part of the party’s Punjab Bachao campaign along with Halka Incharge Suba Singh Badal, the SAD president said, “I want to ask where are the self styled leaders of the Panth like Baljit Singh Daduwal and Dhian Singh Mand? Why they did not visit even one of the 597 sites where these sacrilege’s took place?” He said it was obvious that these leaders did not feel the need to visit any of these sites as their sole purpose was to defame the SAD government in 2015 by falsely accusing it of being complicit in the Bargari sacrilege case on the orders of central agencies.
Badal said he also wanted to remind Punjabis that incidents of sacrilege started in Punjab only after AAP entered the State in 2014. “AAP MLA Naresh Yadav was even convicted in a sacrilege case despite best attempts by AAP to shield him including fielding its senior leaders Harpal Cheema and Harjot Bains to defend him in court,” he said.
The SAD president also took on chief minister Bhagwant Mann for making false claims of Punjab becoming number 1 in school education. Asserting that the chief minister should tell one new school established by his government besides explaining why no new recruitment of teachers had taking place and why schools were being repainted and rechristened as Schools of Eminence? “It is clear that figures are being fudged to claim a ranking in the National Achievement Survey which the chief minister himself once derided as a fake survey,” he said.
Speaking of a new scam which was emerging in Punjab, Badal said the AAP government not only held a rally in Moga last month at government expense but also planned to hold 16,000 rallies, meetings and gram sabhas across Punjab at the cost of the State exchequer. “This is a scam worth hundreds of crores as the AAP government is giving contracts for tents, chairs and food at exorbitant rates and taking back huge sums of money as commission. This despite large sheds available across Punjab to hold such rallies,” he concluded.
