Several Congress leaders from Punjab including sitting and former MLAs and district presidents today said that the Bhartiya Janata Party had conceded the defeat and virtually given a walkover to the Congress by running away from holding the rally at Amritsar on January 22.In a joint statement the Congress leaders including Tripat Rajinder Singh Bajwa, Rana Gurjeet Singh, Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, Om Prakash Soni, Sukh Sarkaria, Dr Raj Kumar Verka, Balbir Singh Sidhu, Navtej Cheema, Harpartap Singh Ajnala, Jassi Khangura, Lalli Majithia and Gurjeet Aujla said that the BJP had given an excuse about the Delhi elections for cancelling the rally, while actually it was scared of Capt Amarinder.They pointed out, the Delhi elections were already scheduled to be held in February as the new assembly was to be constituted by February 15 and now the BJP leaders were trying to use this excuse for running away. “Whom are you trying to fool by using Delhi election ploy?” they asked.
The party leaders asserted that like in the parliamentary elections when their top most leader, Arun Jaitely was defeated by a mammoth margin by Capt Amarinder Singh, they would surely have met the same fate this time with their rally virtually going blank against a mammoth rally to be organised by the Congress.
The Congress leaders said, not only will they hold the rally on January 22 at Amritsar, but they will hold another rally the day the BJP president Amit Shah decides to hold a rally in Amritsar.“We have accepted the challenge and we will take it to the logical conclusion”, they remarked, adding, whenever and wherever the BJP president decides to hold a rally, Congress will hold a parallel rally which will be addressed by Capt Amarinder for everybody to see and decide for himself as which leader and which party is more popular in Punjab.