Captain painting Sikhs as anti-India, says Sukhbir
In a rejoinder to chief minister’s statement on UAPA, the SAD president scoffed at Amarinder’s “fake bravado against outfits like SFJ”, saying that history was witness that in the past the origins of all such outfits had been traced to the Congress
SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal on Thursday said that it was a great and tragic irony that Capt Amarinder Singh is talking about the people of his state in terms of “anti-India” forces in Punjab at a time when the entire country was standing up to salute their patriotic heroics and sacrifices in defending the national borders against China and Pakistan.
In a rejoinder to chief minister’s statement on UAPA, the SAD president scoffed at Amarinder’s “fake bravado against outfits like SFJ”, saying that history was witness that in the past the origins of all such outfits had been traced to the Congress. “First, you send your right hand men to the so-called “Sarbat Khalsa” at Chabba where Khalistan resolutions are passed, and then you start your shallow-dramatic breast-beating on threats to national unity and integrity,” he said.
Sukhbir said that the people of Punjab, especially the Sikhs, have seen through these hypocritical games. “The community that you shrewdly and cunningly want to defame as anti-India just because they support the SAD has seen these games by you and your party bosses in Delhi in the past and will not be befooled,” he said.
The former deputy CM said he was surprised that instead of retracting his steps and desisting from creating the anti-national bogey against the Sikhs and disowning the Indira Gandhi narrative which he had suddenly pulled out of archives, Captain has gone one step farther and has suddenly started seeing “a threat to the country from “anti-India forces” in Punjab.
The SAD chief reiterated that Amarinder was deliberately reviving the anti-Sikh Congress slogans of the 1980s in a familiar Congress strategy to divide Punjabis on religious grounds and divert their attention from the abysmal failures of the Congress government over the past almost four years. “Having failed to deliver on any of the promises he had made on oath of the sacred Sikh scriptures, Captain is now looking to present himself in some dramatic role as a champion and defender of the nation,” he added. Sukhbir also said that he had cautioned the CM against the repressive misuse of UAPA by his police.