Senior SAD leader and Revenue minister Bikram Singh Majithia today lauded Punjabis for boycotting the speech of Gandhi scion and Congress vice president Rahul Gandh by leaving the ‘pandal’ immediately before Rahul got up to speak as part of the foundation stone laying ceremony of a PGIMER satellite centre at Sangrur.In a statement here, Mr Majithia said Punjabis attending the function organized by the Pradesh Congress Committee made it clear that though they might be on opposite sides politically, they had not taken kindly to the crass discourtesy shown by the Gandhi scion by not inviting Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal for the function.
He said it was because of this that people left the ‘pandal’ in large numbers just before Rahul Gandhi rose up to make his speech. “This is a lesson to Rahul that Punjabis do not take kindly to his brand of politics which revolves around brash behavior and an ingrained dis-courtesy towards elders”, he added.
Commenting on Rahul’s speech, the SAD leader said he was shocked to know that the Congress vice president was completely shut off from reality and had chosen to parrot out lines handed over to him by his coterie. “Rahul talked about drugs and the need to curb their smuggling into the State blissfully unaware that Deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal has initiated a war against drugs which has already resulted in the arrest of 7,500 peddlers”. He said recent arrests on the border had also proved that the Border Security Force (BSF) was hand in glove with smugglers adding “Rahul could have spoken about tightening security on the border but he chose to make cheap brownie points by targeting the Punjab government knowing fully well that drugs are coming into Punjab from Pakistan”.
Terming Rahul Gandhi as a “Mumma’s boy” who seemed to know nothing beyond what his Mumma had told him, Mr Majithia said the Gandhi scion was apparently also unaware of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report which had ranked Punjab as the safest State in the country with negative crime rate during the last five years. He said similarly NCRB had ranked Punjab as a State having one of the lowest incidences of crime against women. He said similarly the Gandhi scion parroted wrong facts about the case of Sikh farmers because nobody told him that the Punjabi farmers in Gujarat were in a spot because of an amendment in law done during the previous Congress government there.
Meanwhile the senior leader said rather than gaining anything politically which was the sole motive of today’s public meeting organized by the Congress, the Punjab Congress had portrayed a picture of a party in disarray which had been captured by the entire media and the country. “Former PCC President Capt Amarinder Singh refused to shake hands with current president Partap Bajwa who hit back with retorts against Amarinder in his speech”, Mr Majithia said adding “this state of affairs will only further demoralize the Congress rank and file in the State”.