The Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) had reportedly proposed an alliance in the agrarian State after the success of a grand alliance in Bihar and there were reports that PPCC members had even tried to meet AAP’s Punjab unit to discuss the possibility.
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BJP National Secretary Tarun Chugh said that as Manpreet, the estranged nephew of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, had parted ways on the issue of discontinuation of subsidies to farmers, traders and industrialists, both he and Congress need to spell out their thoughts on it.
Captain Amarinder Singh pointed out during the press conference that the Congress had lost the last Assembly elections in 2012 by a 0.8 per cent vote share while PPP had got 5 per cent of the votes. Badal said an army man never disobeys his seniors but Amarinder “arm-twisted” the entire Congress high command to grab the captaincy of Congress. Badal said that despite two consecutive debacles, Amarinder was clinging to the post of the state Congress chief which, he claimed, was not a trait of any soldier.
Manpreet Badal had unsuccessfully contested the 2014 General Elections from Bathinda on a Congress ticket against his sister-in-law and Akali leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal.
“I am delighted to announce that Manpreet Badal’s PPP merged with the Congress party today”.
In a scathing attack on Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), S. Sukhbir Singh Badal said that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal can not be trusted because he didn’t walk his talk.
Manpreet Badal, 53, was Finance Minister in the state for four years till he broke away from the ruling Akali Dal in 2010 following differences with his uncle, and deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, his cousin. Former chief minister Amarinder Singh also welcomed Badal into the party.
“We feel Congress will be a good, and actually the right and only platform where we can carry forward our Punjab agenda”, he said at the AICC conference. We were treated with a lot of respect. “For instance, if the winning margin comes down to 2% or so, such mergers or alliances will benefit the Congress”, he added.
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He said that Punjab was once the leading states of the country but had badly lost its position. “They won our hearts”, he added. “I think, the plus point here is that the Congress party is being over-cautious and having been out of power for over a decade, it is very conscious of not repeating its old mistakes”, said Ghanshyam Dev, a Punjab-based political analyst and head of the department of political science at DAV College, Chandigarh. “This agenda is now the Congress agenda”, he said.
