DW BUREAU / Chandigarh

Lashing out at Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann over political vendetta, Congress leaders accompanied Leader of Opposition Partap Singh Bajwa to Mohali police station where he was summonned in connection with a case registered against him over his remark that 50 bombs had been sneaked into the state, out of which 18 had exploded and 32 are still there.

The leaders included state Congress President Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, former Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi, former Deputy Chief Minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, former Speaker Rana K.P. Singh, and former minister Brahm Mohindra.

Before leaving for Mohali, the Congress leaders and activists gathered at the Punjab Congress Bhawan here and held a meeting where they reaffirmed and reiterated that what Bajwa had said in an interview was very much true and the party stood by what he said.

Amarinder Singh Raja Warring cautioned the police officials to ensure that they do not succumb to the political pressure of AAP and breach their brief.

He said the Congress does not forget and will remember each official who has intimidated and persecuted the Congress leaders and workers.

He said what Bajwa told a news channel had already been reported by a leading Hindi daily.

"Bajwa gave a detailed list of grenade attacks, which were reported from different parts of the state, which were initially dismissed by the police as tyre bursts and cylinder blasts," said Warring.

Former Chief Minister Channi said Chief Minister Mann should have shown some grace and called up Bajwa and discussed with him the situation of the state.

"Instead, he ordered a first information report (FIR). Mann is no longer holding a stage show but was holding a responsible position as the Chief Minister. Dark clouds are hovering over the horizon of Punjab and the time had come when everyone had to sit together. But, instead, the Chief Minister decided to slap an FIR against the Leader of Opposition," the former Chief Minister said.

Former Deputy Chief Minister Randhawa cornered the Chief Minister, asking him if he was so alert in registering FIRs, why he had not ordered any inquiry so far in the pro-Khalistan activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannu's revelations that he had financed the AAP campaign in 2017 and 2022. Reiterating that what Bajwa told a television channel in an interview was the stand of the entire Congress, Randhawa challenged Chief Minister Mann to reveal where those grenades had come, which were lobbed on various police stations and other places in the state.

He said while on the one hand the police claimed that these were tyre bursts and cylinder blasts, on the other they claimed to have killed one suspect in an encounter. Speaking on the occasion, Leader of Opposition Bajwa said had Chief Minister Mann had any idea of what happened in Punjab till 1992-93, he would be able to realise the seriousness of the situation. "He must not have heard a gunshot in his entire life, how would he know what happened in Punjab?" he said.

Taking a jibe at the Chief Minister over his remarks that he was searching for lawyers, Bajwa asked him whether his colleagues like Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia had come out of Tihar without any lawyers.

Moreover, he said the Mohali Police was not even providing a copy of the FIR to him, and he managed to get it only after the directions from a court.

Referring to the police serving him a summons at his home, he asked the Chief Minister whether he had issued similar summons to those dismissed in drug cases and those found guilty in facilitating Lawrence Bishnoi's interview to television channels.

(editor@dailyworld.in)