The Amritsar Lok Sabha battle is getting more and more personal. Congress candidate and former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh says merely being a Punjabi does not give his BJP rival Arun Jaitley the right to contest from Amritsar and he does not know anything about the place.
In the gruelling battle against the 61-year-old eminent lawyer from Delhi, Singh has also made 'Operation Bluestar' to flush out Sikh militants from the Golden Temple in 1984 a hot button issue blaming BJP and Akali Dal for it.
The 72-year-old Congress veteran rejects Jaitley's claim that he himself is an 'outsider' from Patiala and says Jaitley does not know anything about Amritsar.
"He may be Punjabi. But there are Punjabis living in Australia, New Zealand, the US and Britain. We welcome them all. They are all part of us. But does that give Mr Jaitley give the right to come and fight in Punjab and fight in Amritsar where he does not know the first thing about Amritsar. I don't know if he knows Punjabi," Singh tells PTI in an interview
Unfazed by the national image of his rival, who is said to be destined for bigger things if the NDA comes to power, Singh dismisses Jaitley's description of him as an outsider to Amritsar.
"I am not an outsider. I come very much from Punjab and I must have been to Amritsar about 500 times in the last 47 years of my politics. And based on that and my love for city I got this 25-year plan made for Amritsar(as CM)," he told PTI in an interview.
Singh also waded into politics of BJP by praising Navjot Singh Sidhu, the party MP who represents Amritsar and denied ticket this time.
He describes him as one who tried to get projects for the city but was frustrated by the Akali Dal's government's refusal to give him funds.
"They (Akali Dal-BJP government in Punjab) wouldn't give him one rupee to develop the city. So naturally he got fed up," he said.
