Arvind Kejriwal, the leader of the Aam Aadmi Party, has stated that his party is totally committed to the INDIA coalition but that anyone involved with drugs will not be spared following the arrest of Congress MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira in connection with a drugs case.
Addressing a news conference, Kejriwal said “We are fully committed to the India alliance. We will not separate from the alliance under any circumstances. I have come to know that the Punjab Police arrested some Congress leader yesterday. I do not have its details; Punjab Police will tell it. But we have waged a war against drugs. I would not like to comment on any individual case or person, but we are committed to end drug addiction. In this war against drugs, no matter how big or small a person is, he will not be spared.”
Punjab Police arrested Khaira from his Chandigarh residence earlier this morning in connection with an old case registered in 2015 under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.
The Punjab Congress has been severly critical of the Bhagwant Mann government over the arrest of Khaira alleging political vendetta by the state government.
“I want to condemn Bhawant Mann’s action. Mann thinks he will be in the government forever but he is wrong everyone has to go and his government will also go,” he said while speaking to reporters outside Sardar police station” said Punjab Congress senior leader Partap Singh Bajwa.
“As I am the Leader of the Opposition it is our constitutional right to meet Khaira. We were supposed to meet him in the custody of the police officials but they didn’t allow us. It was a courtesy call and wanted to tell him that the Congress party and each and every leader of the party is with him, nothing more than this” said Bajwa.
Punjab Congress President Amrinder Singh Raja Warring said. “This is a very wrong thing to do. This is all vendetta politics. No case of any kind is made out. When we reached Jalalabad police station, they did not open the lock. Someone told me that the CIA staff had taken him (Sukhpal Singh Khaira) to Fazilka. We reached here but were not allowed to meet Khaira. SSP told us that there are orders from above.”
Meanwhile, responding to the Opposition’s charges, Punjab AAP senior spokesperson Jagtar Singh Dyalpura said that the allegations do not hold any ground as the Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann government in the border state has a zero-tolerance policy against drug smugglers.
Dyalpura said that “sufficient admissible evidence” has been found against the Congress leader and that the case has links from Pakistan to England.
The arrest of Sukhpal Khaira is expected to further dent the relations of AAP and the Congress which have come together to form the INDIA alliance at the centre. The state unit of the Congress has opposed any tie-up or seatsharing arrangement with the AAP in Punjab.