CHANDIGARH: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Friday claimed that the Aam Aadmi Party is "totally faceless" in the state and its ambition to form the next government is a "pipe dream".
He also said that the AAP is an "outsider" in Punjab and will remain so as long as it continues to be disconnected from the state's ground realities.
"With just a year to go for the state Assembly polls, the AAP could not find a face from Punjab to campaign in the municipal polls and had to drag in non-entities from Delhi for electioneering! And now they claim they'll find a chief minister's face that will be the pride of Punjab?" he said.
"The AAP's ambition to rule the state is a 'pipe-dream' as the party is totally faceless in Punjab," the chief minister claimed in a statement here.
"What can a party, which sold off the farmers' interests by implementing one of the farm laws in Delhi back in November, know of Punjab's pride," Singh asked.
Far from learning from their mistakes in the past five years, the AAP continues to blunder its way through Punjab, with absolutely no understanding or concern about the problems of its people, he claimed.
"All they see here is another state to rule, another seat of power. They do not see the pain and the problems of our people," said Amarinder.
The exodus of AAP leaders and members from the party's Punjab unit over the past 2-3 years is just a tip of the iceberg, the fact is that they have no roots here, the chief minister claimed.
"Arvind Kejriwal's party has no existence outside Delhi and will soon be wiped out from there too, given their shameless collusion with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), at whose behest they have been trying to befool the lakhs of farmers camping outside their city for more than two months now," he further alleged.
Punjab neither wants nor needs such a party, said the chief minister, adding that "neither the AAP nor its Delhi model of governance is welcome in Punjab, which is "faring better than the national capital on almost every key index of development".
With every passing year, Kejriwal's government is plunging the national capital lower down into the abyss of devastation, in sharp contrast to Punjab, which has seen an unprecedented growth and development in the past four years, he claimed.
Even the much-touted health model of the Delhi government, which showed a decline by two positions on the health Index from 2015 to 2019, was completely exposed during the COVID-19 peak crisis, he pointed out, calling upon Kejriwal to focus on managing Delhi instead of "wasting precious time and resources in trying to find a footing (or a face) in Punjab or other states".
What Punjab needs is a solid and sincere leadership, not a "party of loud-mouth liars and deceivers", he added.