Pargat Singh's letters on 'government failure': Captain to meet him on Wednesday

JALANDHAR: After his letters to Captain Amarinder Singh detailing failures of the Congress government in the state became public, Jalandhar Cantt MLA Pargat Singh has been invited for a meeting on Wednesday by the chief minister. The hockey captain-turned-politician, who is known for sticking to his guns, has confirmed that he will be meeting Amarinder.
Senior officers of the Punjab government and close aides of the chief minister have been pursuing Pargat after his letter was revealed in the media on Monday. However, he was busy in his constituency on Monday and Tuesday and after they continuously pursued him, a meeting was fixed for early Wednesday afternoon.
When asked Pargat confirmed to TOI that he would be going to see the CM and would raise the issues he wrote about in his letters, including the Bargari sacrilege case, the state government's failure to end the drug menace, stop illegal mining and the drop in revenue from excise.
It is learnt that quite a few Punjab ministers and Congress MLAs have congratulated Pargat for raising these issues, which have been flagged even in the CLP meetings during monsoon session of the Punjab assembly.
Pargat had last year declined the offer of appointment as an adviser to the CM with cabinet rank even as six other MLAs had taken up the offer at the time when discontentment was brewing against the government.
Pargat wrote 2 letters to Amarinder
According to wellplaced sources in the Congress, a meeting of around a dozen MLAs had also taken place in the last week of August 2019 in which they discussed the political situation and the fact that the party was losing the perception battle.
During his previous tenure as SAD MLA, Pargat had refused elevation as chief parliamentary secretary after he had flagged issues about the working of the government with then chief minister Parkash Singh Badal and he later dumped SAD.
Pargat wrote two letters to Amarinder and he sent the copies of the second letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Punjab Congress president Sunil Jakhar. He wrote that despite massive mandate, the Punjab government was failing to deliver its promises and urged the CM to rise to the occasion.