...Time for ministers, MLAs either to succumb to pressures or stand by the people of Punjab
Chandigarh, May 26, 2020: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Punjab has slammed Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh, saying that the efforts to stem the ongoing civil war in the Punjab Cabinet over the excise revenue losses were on, which would prove to be disastrous for Punjab and its people. It said the efforts on part of the Chief Minister office to go for a cabinet rejig were not only unethical but also unconstitutional, besides an attempt to suppress the dissenting voices of the ministers.
In a joint statement issued from party headquarters on Tuesday, party spokesman Kultar Singh Sandhwan, Jai Krishan Singh Rouri, Kulwant Singh Pandori and Manjit Singh Bilaspur (All MLAs) termed the attempt to gagging the dissenting voices of the ministers by attempting a cabinet reshuffle, which smacked of a well thought-out conspiracy of a corrupt, weak and manipulative regime of the ruling government.
The AAP leaders said that the issue in the interest of the people of Punjab was not whether or not Karan Avtar Singh remained the Chief Secretary, but surely was the mindless plunder of the state exchequer, saying if he (Chief Secretary) was responsible for the huge excise revenue losses, a case be registered against him or any other, be he a Minister, MLA or Chief Minister himself by conducting an impartial inquiry into the whole affair to bring the ultimate truth to the fore?
The AAP leaders, expressing surprise over the clean chit given to Chief Secretary Karan Avtar Singh by the Chief Minister on his assertion that there was no revenue losses at all, said the Chief Minister trusted more in the bureaucracy that his own MLAs and Ministers, including the Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal and other senior ministers. The leaders said that AAP rejected the way clean chit was given to the top bureaucrat without holding any impartial inquiry into the whole affair, which was a mockery of the established system.
Kultar Singh andhwan said that it remained to be seen now that whether the Congress MLAs, Ministers, who brought the entire Chief Minister's office on board through Chief Secretary, would recover the extorted money by the Punjab baiters who had looted billions of rupees by having their ill-gotten assets attached, saying that it would be testing time for them to prove their mettle to calling a spade a spade.
The AAP leaders said that if the people of Punjab voted Aam Aadmi Party to power in the 2022 assembly elections in the state, it would crush all mafias, including the mighty liquor mafia, in the state with an iron hand, asserting that billions and billions of swindled by the mafia lords would be recovered from them.