The APP and Congress are resorting to violence against each other in run up to assembly polls which is vitiating the peaceful political environment in the state.Stating this in a statement here today, secretary general of Shiromani Aali Dal (SAD) Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa urged the election commission of India to direct both the parties to act with restraint and limit their campaign within the well defined decorum and not to instigate or provoke or threatened the rival political parties.Dhindsa was commenting on case slapped by police against former Indian Youth Congress president and Giidarbaha legislator Amarinder Singh Raja Warring and his four gunmen on complaint filed by an AAP activist. A case has been registered under section 341,323 and 34 of IPC as the complainant had alleged that he was assaulted. Raja Warring too alleged that AAP had pasted their posters on Congress posters which perhaps triggered clash between the rival parties.The Akali leader said both the Congress and AAP are totally frustrated and are resorting to undemocratic tactics. Given the inbuilt tendencies of both the parties, Dhindsa apprehended that this tendency is likely to intensify if the Election Commission failed to stem the rot.
Both the parties can’t dare to touch SAD leaders or workers and these violent clashes would remain confined and hence of little concern yet the SAD is committed to free, free and peaceful polls and would urge the Election Commission to warn in no uncertain terms the erring AAP and Congress on this account. Shockingly, Dhindsa said Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh himself had predicted that the ensuing assembly polls would be violent though there had never been any significant violence in Punjab polls in the past except the aborted 1991 elections when the terrorists had resorted to selected killing of candidates and finally the polls were cancelled.“ Nobody had taken Amarinder’s prediction seriously that Punjab assembly polls are going to be violent then yet the tendency of the Congress leaders and workers to take to violence on petty excuses only suggest that there was a design and strategy behind the assertions of Punjab Congress president”, averred Dhindsa.Septuagenarian Akali leader with back of lot of political experience said that these incidents should not be dismissed as sporadic ones because these smacks of conspiracy to vitiate assembly polls as both AAP and Congress are resorting to cheap populist tactics to remain in news.