Punjab CM Amarinder Singh Retorts to Delhi Counterpart Kejriwal
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday asserted that he cannot be cowed down by any ED case, refuting his Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal insinuations to this effect. Singh instead alleged that Kejriwal sold off farmers’ interests to the Centre by notifying one of the three recently enacted farm laws.
The Punjab chief minister was responding to Kejriwal’s accusation in a tweet that Amarinder Singh had colluded with the Centre to have an Enforcement Directorate case against his son settled. Singh said Kejriwal’s desperate attempts to hide his government’s utter failure to protect farmers’ interests will not save him from their wrath, nor will they safeguard his party from being decimated in the next Punjab assembly elections.
Just as every Punjabi knows I am not one to be cowed down by any amount of false ED or other cases, they also know you will sell your soul if it serves your purpose, the CM said in a statement here in a frontal attack on Kejriwal. Daring the Delhi CM to cite even a single instance when he backed off under the pressure of ED or any other agency, Amarinder Singh asserted that from the Operation Bluestar to the Sutlej Yamuna Link canal and now on the issue of the central farm laws, he has always done the right thing and stood by his people.
He said the whole world has seen how Kejriwal sold off the farmers’ interests by notifying one of the black farm laws in the national capital at a time when the farmers were preparing to march to Delhi. He said the Delhi chief minister had exposed his own setting with the central government with this act.
Why did you do that, Kejriwal? What pressure did the Centre have on you? Or is it so that you can go grovelling back to them again the next time your pathetic government is floundering to handle the Covid crisis, as you have already done twice, Singh asked Kejriwal. Taking a dig at Kejriwal’s self-proclaimed anger over the conspiracy of certain vested interests to undermine the farmers’ agitation by linking with anti-nationalism, the Punjab CM said the farmers need no endorsement of their genuineness from the man who had hobnobbed with ‘Khalistanis’ in the run-up to the 2017 Punjab assembly polls.
Meanwhile, leaders of Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) castigated Kejriwal for colluding with the Centre on the black farm laws and acting under their diktats to malign the Congress image. Congress MPs Manish Tiwari, Ravneet Bittu and Jasbir Singh Dimpa flayed Kejriwal for committing a fraud on farmers by implementing one of the “vicious” central farmer laws in Delhi.
