Punjab CM takes on Badals for sacrilege cases

Upping the ante against the Akalis led by Sukhbir Badal two days before polling, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Thursday said the SAD President's remarks that the families of the perpetrators of the sacrilege cases would be destroyed would turn on the Badal family.

"They were the ones behind the desecrations and Sukhbir's own family would suffer the consequences," he said towards the culmination of his high-pitch campaign for the Lok Sabha elections.

"If the Akalis had not been involved, why did they go to Sri Darbar Sahib to apologise and do 'kar seva'?" he asked.

He was addressing a public rally in favour of his wife and Congress candidate from Patiala, Preneet Kaur, after campaigning for the party's Anandpur Sahib candidate Manish Tewari in Kharar.

Lashing out at the Badals for their attempts to divide the people on communal lines and for misusing and insulting the Akal Takht, the highest temporal seat of the Sikhs, to further their political interests, Amarinder Singh said the Bargari and other incidents of sacrilege were among the long list of their "sins", and that they would have to pay for it.

The Chief Minister also hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for playing the divisive card in a desperate bid to stay on in power at the cost of the nation's secular character. "What Modi is preaching is not nationalism", he said, asserting that nationalism "is all about security for all all, including the minorities".

"Who is Modi to teach nationalism to us, Punjabis? Punjab has sacrificed the most for the country's freedom, and thereafter," said Amarinder Singh, citing the martyrdom of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Shaheed Udham Singh, Sukhdev and and the tens of thousands of other soldiers who died anonymously, many of them in Kala Paani, where they were thrown by the British.

"Had Modi focused on industrialisation and employment generation, instead of divisiveness, the national economy would not have been in such a pathetic state today", said the Chief Minister, asserting that only the Congress could defeat Modi and his divisive agenda. The future of India and its people was at stake, he warned.

--IANS

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