AAP manipulated rural poll process, SAD routed in 10 dists: Warring

Chandigarh: Punjab Congress president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring on Moday slammed the "myths" about the zila parishad and block samiti results being spread by the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).He said the fact is that while the AAP abused power and manipulated the process, it still could not show impressive performance. The SAD's show was dismal and limited to two districts, Bathinda and Muktsar, while it drew a complete blank in 10 districts, he added. Addressing a press conference at the PCC headquarters, Warring, along with his party colleagues Durlabh Sidhu and Hardeep Singh Kingra, provided detailed figures to prove his point about how the AAP was trying to bask in stolen glory while the SAD was just lying about the figures. He said AAP's game plan was exposed by the former Patiala SSP Varun Sharma, who directed his junior staff on how to prevent opposition candidates from filing nominations so that there was no need to reject them. He said the police and election officials actually followed Sharma's guidelines, which were obviously issued by the AAP govt. Dissecting the results, he said that while the AAP claims to have won 220 of the 347 zila parishad seats, it actually won 136 through the "electoral process," although even that was manipulated with abuse of power. "Of the additional 84 seats that AAP claims to have won, there was a boycott in 18 seats, 11were won unopposed thanks to Varun Sharma's copybook, in five seats papers were torn, and in 32 other seats, the papers were arbitrarily rejected," Warring said, adding while the AAP won 136 seats, Congress won 62, SAD 46, BJP seven, and others won eleven. Similarly, the PCC president against the AAP's claim of winning 1,592 seats, it actually won 838 only through the electoral process. The rest of the seats, he said, the AAP won by abuse and intimidation. There was a boycott in 149 seats, 212 were won unopposed as the candidates were not allowed to file nomination papers in accordance with SSP Sharma's guidebook, 328 seats' papers were rejected, and at 74 places, results were forcibly declared in the ruling party's favour. He said there was not much difference between the AAP and the Congress, as against 838 actual seats won by the AAP, the Congress won 603 seats against all odds. The SAD was far behind with just 420 seats, and the BJP got only 66 seats. Responding to a question about former chief minister Amarinder Singh praising Sukhbir Badal while being critical of his father Parkash Singh Badal, Warring took a dig at the junior Badal, wondering how he could tolerate the insult of his father in trade-off for his own praise. Regarding Sunil Jakhar's claim that he could not pay Rs 350 crores to be the chief minister, the PCC president pointed out that his own BJP colleague Amarinder Singh had already refuted such allegations. That means one of them is wrong, he remarked, while pointing out that both cannot be correct at the same time on this issue. MSID:: 126076432 413 |