CHANDIGARH: Strongly rebutting Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar claim of not responding to his repeated calls, his Punjab counterpart Amarinder Singh on Saturday accused Khattar of brazenly lying and sought his apology for “inflicting brutality” on farmers.
Khattar had hit out at the Punjab CM on Saturday, claiming that he tried to reach Amarinder several times over the past three days to talk on the farmers' issue, but the latter he did not respond to his telephone calls.
Junking the claim, Amarinder said, “Khattar is lying that he tried calling me earlier and I did not respond. But now, after what he has done to my farmers, I will not speak to him even if he calls me 10 times. Unless he apologises and admits that he did wrong with Punjab’s farmers, I will not forgive him.” Khattar had accused the Punjab CM of “only tweeting and running away from talks” with him.
He said his office tried to contact the Punjab CM on six to seven occasions and “every time his staff used to say we will soon get back and then they used to give the plea that the CM was busy in a meeting”.
Rebutting the claim, Singh said if he could talk to the prime minister and the Union home minister so many times on the farmers’ issue, why wouldn’t he take the calls from a neighbouring chief minister, if he had truly called earlier?”
Alleging a conspiracy, Khattar also said that some political parties and organisations in Punjab are ‘sponsoring’ the farmers’ stir. Responding to that, Amarinder said, “Don’t I have better things to do than to incite farmers?”