CHANDIGARH: Pitching for a BJP-mukt Bharat to protect the country’s unity and future, Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Thursday expressed confidence that UPA-3 would take over the nation’s reins to prevent its' secular fabric from being destroyed and to bring it back on the path of development.
Addressing the Patiala District Bar Association in Patiala and later a rally in Dera Bassi, in support of his wife and party candidate from Patiala, Preneet Kaur, Amarinder accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of tinkering with India’s secularism, which used to be its strength and was now under threat from the BJP. The country today was passing through grave times and needed change in the interest of its future, and that of its people, who need development, not divisiveness, he added.
Amarinder also lashed out at the Akalis for playing politics of religion to polarize the people for their vested political interests and blamed them for ruining Punjab in the ten years of their rule, just as the BJP had ruined the country in the last five years. The spate of sacrilege cases clearly showed the extent of politicization of religion under the SAD-BJP government, he added, lashing out at the Akalis for attempting to divide communities with Bargari and other sacrilege incidents.
He said people do not favour Modi’s idea of breaking the country by communalizing it, he said, adding that it was time for a BJP-free India. BJP had reached the peak of its political success and is now headed for a downfall, he added. Ups and downs are part of a democracy and the Congress had been down for some time but was now on a rise, he said asserting that UPA-3 will emerge in response to the mood of the country for change.
Amarinder strongly condemned the politicization of the defence forces, which had always been non-partisan and secular in character and said no prime minister had ever taken credit for fighting the enemy on
the borders, unlike Modi, who only spoke of `I. I and I’. Punjab was proud of the achievements of the Army and Air Force but did not want war as, being a border state, it would be worst sufferer in case of outbreak of hostilities, he added.