News Analysis India

Tag: sacrilege case

  • Congress high command steps in to douse Punjab fire 

    Express News Service
    CHANDIGARH:  Infighting in Punjab’s ruling Congress party over the sacrilege case appears to have calmed on Thursday, following an intervention by the Congress high command. According to sources, the party high command has asked Chief Minister Amarinder Singh not to take any actions against the party members who have been critical of him over the issue of justice in the sacrilege case and the subsequent police shooting. The party high command has also asked those who have been raising their voice against the CM over the issue to refrain from further attacks. 

    Sources said Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi, former party president Rahul Gandhi and party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra have taken independent feedback on the situation. Rahul Gandhi is expected to hold a meeting with all Congress MLAs and MPs of the state. He is also expected to meet the 37 party leaders who lost in last year’s Assembly elections. Besides, Rahul may meet the party’s state president and district leaders.

    Sources said Harish Rawat, who is the Congress in-charge of Punjab, will submit a report to the party high command on the situation after meeting CM Amarinder and the MLAs who’ve raised their voices over the sacrilege case. Sources said the party has not been able to make a final decision on who’ll takeover as the next state president because of infighting.

    While one group wants Navjot Singh Sidhu to replace Sunil Jakhar as the party’s state president, this is being strongly opposed by the Amarinder camp. With next year’s Assembly elections fast approaching, the person who now becomes the party’s state president will have a considerable influence over allotting party tickets. Cabinet minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa and MP Ravneet Singh Bittu want a change in the leadership. They have asked that someone with decades of experience be made the head of the state unit.

  • Sacrilege case: Enquiry against Sidhu, pressure on others who criticised Punjab CM Amarinder Singh

    Express News Service
    CHANDIGARH: Punjab Congress MLAs Navjot Singh Sidhu and Pargat Singh, and the state technical education minister Charanjeet Singh Channi, who have have criticised Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh over the sacrilege case, are now beginning to feel the heat. The state Vigilance Bureau has launched an inquiry against close aides and wife of Sidhu over some land deals. It has reportedly prepared dossiers against him and his wife Dr Navjot Kaur Sidhu. 

    Amritsar SSP (Vigilance Bureau) Parampal Singh has submitted a seventeen-page unsigned report on “shady deals” involving Sidhu’s wife or his close aides. The report noted that one of Sidhu’s aides was instrumental in getting Change in Land Use (CLUs) files of illegal and unauthorised colonies cleared. 

    Meanwhile, Pargat has allegedly received threats from the political secretary to the chief minister. Pargat said Capt Sandeep Sandhu, the political secretary to Capt Amarinder Singh has threatened to book him in a police case for raising his voice against the CM on the issue of sacrilege and police firing.

    “Being a former captain of the Indian hockey team, I was shocked to have gotten such a message. But if speaking truth on the sacrilege and the police firing cases was not acceptable to them, let them do whatever they want,” he said.Pargat alleged that other MLAs and ministers too are being arm-twisted. 

    “If the Vigilance has to do something, it should take irrigation scam to its logical conclusion. But the government is making efforts to save the big guns who are involved,” Pargat said. Pargat had met cabinet ministers Sukhjinder Randhawa and Charanjit Channi, MP Partap Bajwa, and former minister and MLA Navjot Singh Sidhu among others on the sacrilege issue.

    For Channi, the trouble has come from the Punjab State Women Commission, which has issued a notice to the state government seeking a status report on a two-year-old case of a female IAS officer, who has accused Channi of sending inappropriate messages to her.

  • Sacrilege case probe: Sidhu accuses Amarinder of evading responsibility

    By PTI
    CHANDIGARH: Congress leader and Amritsar MLA Navjot Singh Sidhu on Friday attacked Punjab CM Amarinder Singh, accusing him of evading responsibility in the case involving the desecration of a religious text.

    In a tweet, the former state minister also asked if the case is not the top priority for him.

    Sidhu’s fresh comments have come in the wake of the Punjab and Haryana High Court quashing a probe report into police firing at people protesting against the desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib in Faridkot’s Kotkapura in 2015.

    The HC had directed the state government to set up a new SIT to investigate the case without the then IPS officer Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh, who resigned soon after the court order.

    Earlier in the month, the Amritsar legislator had demanded that the SIT probe into the case should be made public.

    Launching a direct attack on Amarinder Singh on Friday, who also holds the Home department portfolio, the Congress MLA asked, “Is Sacrilege case not the top priority for the Home Minister?” “Evading of responsibility & making only Advocate General (AG) a scapegoat means Executive Authority has No supervisory control. Who controls the AG? Legal Team is just a pawn in this game of shifting responsibilities,” Sidhu said in a tweet.

    Another senior Congress leader, Pratap Singh Bajwa, too had recently alleged that the state’s advocate general and his team were unable to defend the interests of the state despite professional and efficient investigation done by the SIT.

    Two days ago, Sidhu had alleged that the delay in justice is the ‘failure of one person, who is hand-in-glove with the culprits’.

    The Amritsar MLA, however, did not name anybody then.

    A month ago, Amarinder Singh and Navjot Singh Sidhu had met over tea, discussing the possible reinduction of the Amritsar MLA in the state cabinet.

    Harish Rawat, who is in-charge of Punjab affairs at the All-India Congress Committee (AICC), had been pushing for an important position for Sidhu. Last month, Sidhu also met Congress president Sonia Gandhi in Delhi.

    The tensions between Amarinder Singh and Sidhu had come out in the open in May 2019 when the CM blamed the former cricketer for the ‘inept handling’ of the Local Government Department, claiming it had resulted in the ‘poor performance’ of the Congress in urban areas in the Lok Sabha polls.

    Sidhu was later stripped of this portfolio in a cabinet reshuffle, after which he resigned.

  • Sacrilege cases: HC snub to Punjab government triggers war of words

    Express News Service
    CHANDIGARH:  Politics over ‘sacrilege’ cases is set to intensify in Punjab in the run-up to the Assembly polls early next year with the Punjab and Haryana High Court quashing the government investigation into a firing incident in Kotkapura town four years ago. 

    The Congress government has come under fire as the HC, in its April 9 order, also directed the state to reconstitute the SIT without IPS officer Kunwar Vijay Partap Singh. The case had spelt doom for the SAD-BJP government in the 2017 Assembly polls. The case goes back to October 14, 2015, when the police opened fire on a crowd in Bargiri village protesting ‘sacrilege’, killing two persons. 

    The Shiromani Akali Dal and the AAP have attacked the state government for the shoddy probe. They have been joined by former cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu who on Tuesday paid obeisance at Burj Jawahar Singh gurdwara at Bargari, the epicentre of the sacrilege incidents, and demanded that the findings of the SIT probe be made public. Sidhu hit out at his own party for “not presenting the facts”. 

    SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal termed CM Amarinder Singh’s reaction to the HC order as “ranting of a spoilt kid”. He said the “midsummer madness” of the CM indicated his impending defeat in the polls. “The Chief Minister’s absurd and self-contradictory statement is a clear sign that he has lost his mental equilibrium.” 

    Bhagwant Mann, MP from Sangrur and chief of the Punjab AAP, alleged that the Badals had withdrawn all cases involving Amarinder “at the last moment”. “Amarinder is only returning the favour. The only difference is that in Amarinder’s case the witness turned hostile and in Badal’s case, the lawyer had turned hostile.”On his part, Amarinder asked the opposition parties to wait for the detailed order before claiming victory. “The SIT, at no point, absolved the Badal family of their involvement in the incident,” he said, vowing to ensure justice for the families.