Hooch tragedy: Ministers lash out at SAD & AAP

Punjab Cabinet Ministers on Thursday lashed out at the opposition parties saying that they are using the unfortunate hooch tragedy to play with the sentiments of the people with an eye on the Assembly elections.

The opposition was so busy playing to the gallery that even the sufferings of the victims and their families seemed not to have affected them, said Cabinet Ministers Sukhbinder Singh Sarkaria, Sadhu Singh Dh a r a m s o t , S u n de r Sham Arora and Bharat Bhushan Ashu, in a joint statement issued.

Ridiculing the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal’s demand of Congress government’s dismissal, the ministers said the game plan of the party had been completely exposed.

Ministers said it was clear that, following the pattern of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the Akalis, acting on the directives of their political masters – the BJP and are trying to destabilize Punjab’s duly elected government.

Lambasting the Akalis, the ministers said the cheap tactics of the Akalis will not succeed, and they would end up humiliating themselves even more in the eyes of the people of Punjab.

If governments could be dismissed for crimes committed by gangsters and criminal mafias, the SAD-BJP government of the past would have been dismissed in the first year of their rule, ministers said, adding that they had prevailed mafia raj prevailed across the state during their tenure.

 The ministers also ridiculed the Akalis for making accusations of the complicity of some elected Congress leaders in the liquor mafia and said that “Wait for the inquiry to be over. The Chief Minister has already made it clear that no one involved in the tragedy would be spared.”

Reacting to Sukhbir’s demand for the resignation of the Chief Minister, the ministers asked the SAD president how many times he had stepped down after the numerous deaths due to illicit liquor, drugs, police atrocities, etc during the Badal rule.

Further thrashing AAP, the ministers said that If the Centre had to step in to help the Arvind Kejriwal government to manage the Covid-19 pandemic, one can only imagine what the usual level of governance in Delhi must be.