Badals are just 'mountebanks': Amarinder

Describing the Badal family as "mountebanks" engaged in histrionics under frustration over their "declining political graph", PCC chief Amarinder Singh today said Akalis have no "meaningful agenda" to fight the elections.
With a "shameful track" record of 10 years of "misrule", the Badals were resorting to all kinds of cheap gimmicks and are pursuing a regressive poll agenda, underlined by personal and slanderous attacks, said Amarinder in a statement issued here.
He said the people would retaliate forcefully to throw out the Badals in the coming assembly polls.
"Faced with imminent electoral defeat, the Akalis have taken to launching personal and baseless attacks against me and my party," said Amarinder, citing the spate of comments by senior SAD leaders against his inherited legacy and the accusation that he was "bullying" the Election Commission.

"Do the Badals have such a low opinion of the EC that they believe anyone can bully them," asked Amarinder, further demanding to know if raising concerns and requests with the EC amounted to pressurizing them.
The Punjab Congress president said Akalis had absolutely no solid argument to counter the Congress charges and apprehensions raised with the EC.

He claimed that Sukhbir Badal had launched a project for which the foundation stone had already been laid by a union minister.
He asserted that the people of Punjab, who had suffered "extreme hardship" under the Badals rule, would not be taken in by such publicity stunts.

Recounting his talks with Gandhi during his first meeting
after a six-month hiatus following the passage of the radical law by Punjab assembly in 2004, the former chief minister said he told the Congress president that he passed the act because he did not want the Gandhi family to suffer further from the malady of terrorism.
"I said Punjab has been through terrible times (dark days of terrorism) and you (Sonia) have lost your husband (Rajiv) and your mother-in-law (Indira) to terrorism. And I don't want you to lose your children as well to this," revealed Capt Singh.
The former CM revealed about the rather surreptitious passage of the radical bill by his government during a debate after the launch of his biography authored by Chandigarh-based writer Khushwant Singh here yesterday

Singh made the revelations in reply to reporters' queries on the Haryana's Indian National Lok Dal's threat to undertake digging of SYL canal in the territory of Punjab from Thursday.
While detailing how he got the law enacted, Capt Singh, the present Punjab Congress chief, claimed he got the bill passed in 2004 "to safeguard Punjab's interests."
"We (Congress) brought the Bill to the House (Punjab Assembly in 2004). I sent the Bill to (Parkash Singh) Badal (who was then in opposition) just an hour before our Cabinet had passed it. At 12 o'clock sharp, I introduced the Bill, by 2 o'clock the House unanimously approved it and we sent it to the Governor and he gave his assent," Capt Singh said.

Continuing further, he said, "The poor old Governor thought the Congress government was moving the Bill and quickly gave his assent, though he also got sacked for it later. By 5 o'clock, it (the Termination of Agreements Act) had become the law (on the day the House passed it)."
Justifying the enactment of the now annulled law, Singh claimed ten lakh acres of land will go dry in Punjab if this canal is built and about six lakh families will go without food in that belt of Punjab, which has a history of falling prey to terrorism.
Capt Singh expressed concern that Haryana's main opposition has given a call to dig the SYL canal by marching towards Punjab tomorrow.

Stating that the SYL issue had the potential to trigger the revival of terrorism in Punjab, Amarinder Singh warned that the militant organizations would exploit the "fragile situation" on the ground to further their "anti-India agenda if not checked immediately.