Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today ridiculed the former Chief Minister and Congress deputy leader in the Lok Sabha Capt. Amarinder Singh for playing to the gallery rather seriously focusing on his much hyped mass contact program to reclaim his party’s base and credibility, which has been shoddily eroded due to people’s unflinching faith and confidence in the policies and programs of the SAD-BJP alliance in the state. Talking to the media persons on the sidelines on the first day of his Sangat Darshan program in the Jandiala Guru Assembly Segment, the Chief Minister said that the real ‘Mass Contact’ program to establish cordial relations with the general public was his time tested ‘Sangat Darshan’ program which was primarily aimed at resolving the issues of common man on the spot besides instilling a sense of confidence in the functioning of the state administration. He quipped, ‘What Amarinder Singh was doing for the last two days was nothing short of theatrical just to befool people by targeting his bête noire PPCC President Mr. Partap Singh Bajwa and opposing SAD-BJP alliance rather hardly making any efforts to establish contact with people in the right earnest’. The Chief Minister further said that Capt. Amarinder was bent hell upon to tarnish SAD’s image and malign it’s leaders in every possible manner by telling white lies in the broad daylight.
Replying to another query about the drug menace, the Chief Minister said that Punjab was fighting a war on this issue and has taken series of bold decisions to stamp out this curse having several social and economic implications. He said we have opened several drug de-addiction centres to provide the best suitable treatment to the drug addicts for their detoxification. Besides a network of rehabilitation centres have also been set up in the state for the rehabilitation of drug addicts to enable them to lead a happy life with self respect. Mr. Badal further lamented that the narcotics like Heroine was smuggled into Punjab from Afghanistan via Pakistan and similarly synthetic drugs were neither produced nor manufactured in our state. On the Law & Order front, our government had taken a tough posture against the drug traffickers who were indulging in the illegal smuggling of drugs across the state by taking stern actions against these offenders. Majority of these culprits were now languishing in jails for such heinous crimes committed against the humanity. Likewise, even landed properties of several such drug smugglers and traffickers were confiscated as a deterrent to refrain them from indulging in such anti-social activities. He also welcomed the recent decision of Rajasthan High Court directing the Rajasthan Government to ban the open sale of Poppy Husk and Opium in their state.
Badal hoped that this historic decision would be a major respite for our state as the majority of these narcotics were freely flown into Punjab from Rajasthan. Justifying the issue of transferring Sikh prisoners from other states to Punjab, the Chief Minister categorically said that our government did not committed anything wrong as we have not released rather only shifted them to the state jails that too within the ambit of law of the land. On the contrary the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat, an outfit of RSS has even approached the Union Home Ministry to release all the Sikh prisoners lodged in different jails of the country on humanitarian grounds.
Acceding to the genuine demand of the local residents of several villages during his Sangat Darshan, the Chief Minister asked the Deputy Commissioner, Amritsar to immediately organize special camps for issuing death and birth certificates to them as they complained him about facing lot of hardships and harassment on account of inordinate delay in getting these vital documents. Prominent amongst others who were present on the occasion included Member Parliament Mr. Ranjit Singh Brahampura and MLA Jandiala Guru Mr. Baljit Singh Jalal Usma. The Chief Minister was accompanied by his Special Principal Secretary Mr. Ajoy Sharma besides the senior officers of the civil and police administration of Amritsar district.