CHANDIGARH: Former Punjab CM Capt Amarinder Singh on Saturday said as chief minister, he had received specific inputs that current CM Charanjit Singh Channi and several other Congress leaders had a share in the money earned by the sand mining mafia.
"From top to bottom, right up to the level of senior ministers, many were involved in the illegal sand mining. I had told Sonia Gandhi about it while I was the chief minister. She asked
me what action I was taking in the matter, and I told her that I will have to start from the top. The one and only mistake I made during my entire tenure were that I did not take any action then out of my sense of loyalty to the Congress and also I did not get a go-ahead from Sonia Gandhi," said Amarinder.
While Channi’s involvement in the mining mafia and in the #metoo incident tainted his reputation as CM, state Congress chief Navjot Sidhu’s mental instability made him unfit to run the party in Punjab, said Amarinder.
Expressing surprise at what Rahul Gandhi saw in Channi and Sidhu, the former CM said the Congress' decision to sideline him for the duo was inexplicable. He said none of the CM faces or prospective candidates had the mental acumen to think about Punjab’s future.
“How can a man who claims that he is talking to God for two hours every day -- in the morning and evening -- be stable?” asked Amarinder, referring to Sidhu.
Amarinder made it clear that he will contest once again from his home constituency of Patiala and ruled out any challenge from the Congress or any other party.
The PPCC president can go around hugging Pakistan’s Imran Khan and General Bajwa as much as he likes, but that is not going to bring peace, nor will people tolerate such things when our soldiers are being killed at the border every day,” he said, adding that since 2017, Punjab alone had lost as many as 83 soldiers to Pak firing.
Amarinder labelled AAP’s CM nominee Bhagwant Mann an "out-and-out comedian" which Punjab, with its 600 km-long borders with Pakistan, definitely did not need. The people of Punjab will not be fooled by AAP and Arvind Kejriwal’s antics just as they were not befooled back in 2017, he said, rejecting any poll surveys putting AAP ahead in polls.
Amarinder further said the Badals and their Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) were responsible for the 2015 sacrilege cases and the drug and mafia menace, They too are not suitable for the state. The ex-CM said it was he who had successfully taken the sacrilege cases to the courts despite the hurdles and delays in getting them back from the CBI.
He ruled out any post-poll tie-up with either Congress or AAP, saying the PLC had a clear alliance with BJP and SAD (Sanyukt), which will definitely win the elections. The three parties were working on a common minimum programme for the state, which will secure Punjab’s and its people’s future, he said, adding that the CM face of the alliance was yet to be decided.