Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal on Friday accused Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh of indulging in "flip-flops" and "creating confusion" in the Sikh community over the sensitive sacrilege issue.
Badal asked the chief minister to tell people that the previous SAD-BJP government had referred the sacrilege case to the CBI only in response to the strong and persistent demand for this by the Amarinder-led Congress in state.
He was referring to Chief Minister Amarinder Singh's comment on Thursday that the state government has no faith in the CBI. This came after the probe agency on Wednesday told a Mohali court that that a new special investigation team will probe the desecration of religious texts in Bargari.
Amarinder Singh has accused the Centre of pressuring the CBI at the behest of the Badals, who led the previous government in the state, and said they would not allow them prevent the investigation from going back to the Punjab Police.
The agency had earlier filed a closure report in the case involving the desecration of religious texts in Faridkot's Bargari and Burj Jawahar Singh Wala villages, saying the circumstantial evidences did not prove the occurrence of the crime.
The alleged desecration of religious scriptures in 2015 during the SAD-BJP rule had sparked outrage in the Sikh community.
Referring to the chief minister's reported comments in a national daily on the sacrilege issue and subsequent clarification, Badal said, "Amarinder Singh should stop his daily flip-flops aimed at creating and prolonging confusion among the Sikhs on the profoundly sensitive issue of the tragic sacrilege of Shri Guru Granth Sahib."
Seeking to clarify his comments in a newspaper interview, Amarinder Singh had on Tuesday said that at no point did he say that Parkash Singh Badal or his son Sukhbir were not involved in the sacrilege.
"As is evident from the reported interview itself, all I said was that Badal did not himself go and tear up the holy Sri Guru Granth Sahib. But that does not rule out his involvement in the matter," he had said.
In a statement, the SAD chief alleged, "Amarinder only wants to prolong this confusion till the February 2022 polls with an aim that the sacrilege issue dominates the political discourse in the state for five years so that people's attention remained distracted from his abject failures like non-fulfilment of his solemn promises to the people of Punjab, especially youth and the farmers."
In August 2018, the Punjab Assembly had passed a resolution to take back the cases from the CBI and hand over to Punjab police special investigation team.
The previous SAD-BJP government had handed over three sacrilege casestheft of a 'bir' (copy) of Guru Granth Sahib from a Burj Jawahar Singh Walagurdwara on June 1, 2015, putting up of hand-written sacrilegious posters in Bargari and Burj Jawahar Singh Wala on September 25 and torn pages of the holy book being found at Bargari on October 12, 2015 in Faridkot to the CBI for investigation.
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