Capt Amarinder Singh, Chief Minister

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 29

Trashing the call records released by his Haryana counterpart, Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Sunday said if ML Khattar really wanted to connect to him, he could have used official channels or called up on the mobile phone.

Why would i not talk to him?

If I can talk to Central leaders, including the Prime Minister, on the issue of the farmers’ protest, why would I try to wriggle out of talking to Khattar? - Capt Amarinder Singh, Chief Minister

“If at all someone from his office called my residence, why were the calls made to an attendant? Why were official channels not used to get in touch with me?” asked the Punjab Chief Minister.

“Top officials from the Principal Secretary to DGP have been in touch with each other on the farmers’ issue for past several days, yet none conveyed Khattar’s desire to talk to me at any point in time,” the CM said.

“How many times in the past has Khattar used the attendant channel to get in touch with me?” he asked the Haryana CM. Captain Amarinder further said: “I have an attendant to receive calls at my residence from 9 am to 5 pm. Khattar could simply have picked up the phone and called me on my mobile phone.”

Captain Amarinder lambasted the Haryana CM, saying he was out to suppress the farmers and had no serious intent of discussing their protests with him. The Chief Minister also lashed out at Khattar over his remarks that “Amarinder would be responsible if Covid spreads now due to the farmers’ protest.”

“If he (Khattar) was so concerned about farmers spreading Covid in Haryana, whose track record in the pandemic remains extremely poor, he should not have stopped them within the state, but should have allowed them to move quickly through to Delhi,” said the Punjab CM.

On Khattar’s remark that farmers should not block Haryana’s borders, Captain Amarinder pointed out that it was Khattar’s government and police that had been blocking the borders for the past three days by forcibly stopping the farmers from proceeding.

Captain Amarinder alleged Khattar’s lies on the issue had been exposed by the Haryana farmers themselves, as they had not only rejected their CM’s claims that no farmer from his state had joined the march but had shown their ID cards, duly issued by the Haryana government.