Chandigarh, December 22
Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring today blasted the myths about the Zila Parishad and Block Samiti results being spread by the ruling Aam Aadmi Party and the Shiromani Akali Dal. He said, the fact is that while the AAP abused power and manipulated the process and still could not show impressive performance, the SAD show was dismal and limited to two districts of Bathinda and Muktsar only, while it drew a complete blank in ten districts.
Addressing a press conference at the PCC headquarters here today, Warring, along with his party colleagues Durlabh Sidhu and Hardeep Singh Kingra, gave the detailed figures to prove his point as how the AAP was trying to bask in stolen glory while SAD was just lying about the figures. He said, AAP’s game plan was exposed by the former Patiala SSP Varun Sharma on record by directing his junior staff as how to prevent the opposition candidates from filing the nominations so that there was no need to reject them. He said the police and election officials actually followed Sharma’s guidelines, which obviously were issued by the AAP government.
Dissecting the results, he said, while the AAP claims to have won 220 of the 347 Zila Parishad seats, it actually won 136 through the “electoral process” although even that also was manipulated with abuse of power. He said, of the additional 84 seats that AAP claims to have won, there was boycott in 18 seats, eleven it won unopposed thanks to Varun Sharma’s copybook, in five seats, papers were torn and in 32 other seats the papers were arbitrarily rejected. He said, while the AAP won 136, Congress won 62, the SAD 46, the BJP seven and others won eleven.
Similarly, the PCC president exposed the AAP’s claims on the Block Samiti results also. He said, against the claim of winning 1592 seats, it actually won 838 only through the electoral process. Rest of the seats, he added, the AAP won by abuse and intimidation. He said, there was boycott in 149 seats, 212 won unopposed as the candidates were not allowed to file nomination papers in accordance with the SSP Sharma’s guidebook, 328 seats papers were rejected and at 74 places results were forcibly declared in the ruling party’s favour. He said, actually there was not much difference between the AAP and the Congress as against 838 actual seats won by the AAP, the Congress won 603 seats against all odds. He said the SAD was far behind with just 420 seats and BJP got only 66 seats.
Warring ridiculed the claims of the SAD and its leader that the party had revived and it had come in second place ahead of the Congress. He pointed out, there cannot be a greater lie than that. Referring to Sukhbir’s claims of “better strike rate than Congress”, he remarked, one of the parties contested just ten seats and won three should that mean that party is ahead of everyone else.
Replying to a question about former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh praising Sukhbir Badal, while being highly critical of his father Parkash Singh Badal, Warring took a dig at the junior Badal wondering how he could tolerate the insult of his father in trade off for his own praise.
About Sunil Jakhar’s claim that he could not pay Rs 350 crores to be the Chief Minister, the PPCC president pointed out, his own BJP colleague Amarinder Singh had already refuted such allegations. That means one of them is wrong, he remarked, while pointing out, both cannot be correct at the same time on this issue.
