Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has slammed the Congress party for claiming that 32 party MLAs were about to switch sides.
Mann targeted Congress leader Partap Singh Bajwa for the claims and asked him to focus on keeping his party’s legislators together instead. Bajwa had claimed that while 32 AAP MLAs were in touch with the Congress party, Mann was in touch with the BJP.
“When (Arvind) Kejriwal decides to remove him, he (Mann) will pack his bags and join them (BJP),” Bajwa, Punjab’s Leader of the Opposition (LoP), had claimed.
Winding up a debate in the Assembly on a resolution against the Centre’s draft National Policy Framework on Agricultural Marketing on Tuesday, Mann lashed out at Bajwa for his “baseless statement” about AAP MLAs and termed it a rhetoric to hog media limelight.
“They are into establishing contact with other MLAs but do not have any contact with their own,” said the chief minister in a jibe at the Congress.
Congress should introspect: Mann
Mann said that ever since he assumed office, Congress leaders have claimed he will not remain chief minister for six months or one year. “A day after the Delhi assembly polls, they again claimed that I will be replaced,” the chief minister said.
Mann also asked Congress to introspect. “You scored a zero for the third time in Delhi. You set your house in order. There are four to five groups (in Punjab Congress).”
The 117-member Punjab assembly has 93 AAP MLAs, 16 Congress MLAs, and 2 BJP MLAs.
Hitting out at Bajwa, the chief minister said such leaders unabatedly issue such irrational statements but never raise the issue of the Punjab before the Union government. He alleged that during Congress rule, the chief ministers were the “most inaccessible, corrupt and inefficient leaders, due to which they were rejected by the people.
The AAP government in Punjab has been in focus ever since the party lost power in the national capital earlier this month. Soon after AAP’s defeat in Delhi, Punjab chief minister was in Delhi for a meeting of AAP leaders. The meeting was attended by former Delhi chief minister and AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal, senior leader Manish Sisodia, all Punjab MLAs, and other key party functionaries.
“Mann said people have seen the previous chief minister only on a few occasions in the state as the “epicurean monarch” was either busy with personal work or glued to his chair in the palace.
They are into establishing contact with other MLAs but do not have any contact with their own.
