CHANDIGARH: Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh on Thursday slammed Union minister Prakash Javadekar over his "disgraceful and desperate" attempt to shift blame for the "shocking" Red Fort violence.
The Punjab CM said that the incident "had evidently been instigated by supporters and members of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in collusion with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), with the Congress nowhere in the picture.”
"Workers and supporters of the BJP and AAP, and not the Congress, have been caught on camera waving the Nishan Sahib at the Red Fort,” said Singh in a strong retaliation to the Union minister's allegations against the Congress, and party's government in Punjab.
He also pointed to the Delhi Police which named Deep Sidhu, a key aide of BJP MP Sunny Deol, as one of the main instigators of the violence and Amrik Micky, an AAP member who was also spotted at the Red Fort.
"Not a single Congress leader or member was seen at the Red Fort indulging in any kind of lawlessness,” Amarinder Singh claimed.
The CM said that even the farmers were not responsible for the January 26 trouble, which was in fact the doing of anti-social elements who had infiltrated the tractor rally.
"The Centre should also get a free and fair probe conducted into the possible role of any political party or even a third country as is being alleged by BJP’s own leaders, to ensure that the guilty are punished and the genuine farmers are not unnecessarily maligned or harassed," he added.
The Punjab CM also lashed out at the Union minister for accusing Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of inciting the violence.
"Did Rahul ask anyone to climb Red Fort? He did not. It was BJP and AAP men who did that," he asked.
Rahul had, in fact, promptly condemned the violence and made it clear that violence was no solution to the crisis, he added.
"These allegations are nothing but a cover-up attempt by the BJP leader for his own party’s role in the violence and in fact for their utter failure to manage the situation which they had created in the first place with the unilateral implementation of the farm laws," the CM said.
Permission given by Delhi Police
"How could I stop peaceful farmers from going to their own national capital to exercise their democratic right of protest,” Amarinder Singh further said while reacting to the Union minister’s statement that the Punjab government failed to stop farmers from joining the tractor rally.
"Permission for the tractor march was officially given by the Delhi Police and there was no reason for the Punjab government to prevent farmers from joining the rally", he said.
If there was a ban on the movement of farmers to the Delhi borders, the central government, of which Javadekar is a part, should have directed the BJP chief minister in Haryana to stop them on the way, the CM said.
For more than a couple of months, farmers had been peacefully agitating in Punjab without causing any trouble, before camping at the Delhi border, where also they had been completely peaceful for two months before the events of January 26, the chief minister pointed out.
The CM said that pinning the blame for the violence on the Punjab government or on the Congress is clearly a diversionary tactic on the part of the BJP leadership.
Centre did not pay heed
Amarinder further pointed out that all those months when the farmers were blocking railway tracks in Punjab, he had been reaching out repeatedly to the central leadership, including the Prime Minister and a host of ministers, to intervene and resolve the crisis.
“But nobody heeded us, nobody listened to me or to the agitating farmers, fighting for their survival", he added.