Amarinder rejects Harsimrat's claim of misusing official machinery

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Sunday rejected Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal's accusations of the Congress disrupting her poll rallies. "The anger of the people who had been victimised for 10 years by the Badals and their cronies are now finding voice," Singh said, expressing surprise that Badal, the Shiromani Akali Dal candidate from Bathinda, was facing protests only in some villages and not all over the states.

Badal had on Saturday accused the police of playing into the hands of the ruling Congress, alleging that it refused to take action against some miscreants who tried to disrupt her poll rally in Bathinda. Singh said it was the "wrath of the people that they were venting against the sufferings meted out by the SAD on them for 10 years".

The fact that Badal was prevented from entering a village in her own constituency only showed that "karma" was catching up fast with the Badals, who had made the people of Punjab shed "tears of blood over their decade-long misrule", the chief minister alleged. The Congress leader said the Akalis had "sabotaged" their own prospects with their "misdeeds", including their alleged attempts to polarise the people with sacrilege cases.

Singh accused Badal of failing to do anything for any section of the state's people despite being a Union minister in the Modi government, saying she had the "audacity" now to seek votes from those very people whose lives she and her family had "ruined". The protest by a farmers' union, the 'Bargari Morcha and others who had prevented Badal from entering a village to address an election rally was clearly a "sign of the anger" of the people, he said.

"Did she really expect the people to welcome her with open arms after what the Badals did to them?" Singh asked, adding that both the Bargari desecration and the farmer suicides were extremely grave issues, for which he said Punjab and its people could never forgive the Badals. PTI CHS HMB

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