Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Wednesday accused the BJP of resorting to provocative and inflammatory actions aimed at disturbing the State’s law and order in the wake of the recent attack on State BJP president Ashwani Sharma’s motorcade, for which the police have already identified several farmers union members as being responsible.
Terming Mr. Sharma’s accusations against the Punjab Congress baseless, the Chief Minister said the BJP leader seemed bent on spreading false propaganda to promote the interests of his party. “These actions were clearly aimed at diverting the attention of the people from the farmers’ angst against the BJP over the farm laws,” he said.
The Chief Minister asserted that the people of Punjab, including the farmers, would not be misled by the BJP’s irresponsible statements and actions.
“The farmers were angry and anguished at the farm laws enacted by the BJP-led Central government, and instead of empathising with them and conveying their pain to the high command, the BJP State leadership was trying to exploit the October 12 incident to earn political brownie points. Contrary to the falsehoods Mr. Sharma was trying to spread, the State government had been taking all steps to ensure the security of the BJP leaders amid the farmers’ protests,” he said.
Meanwhile, giving details of the incident of October 12, Director General of Police Dinkar Gupta said that around 7 p.m, Mr. Sharma’s motorcade was confronted by around 25 protesters belonging to different farmer’s unions.
“These protesters had been picketing the toll plaza at Cholang on NH-1 for almost two weeks from Jalandhar to Jammu. After 15-18 seconds of protest, both the vehicles in the motorcade, which kept moving all the time, were allowed to go but one of the protesters hit and broke the rear windscreen of one of the vehicles with a wooden flag stick,” he said.
A criminal case had been registered against the protesters under Sections 341, 427, 148, 149, 120 B of the Indian Penal Code, he said.
