CHANDIGARH: Keeping an eye on the Assembly elections in Punjab, the Congress on Friday launched a booth-level mobilisation programme, with the party’s General Secretary Bhupesh Baghel saying these elections "are going to be the most important ones".
Asserting that these elections will decide the fate of Punjab, he said for Congressmen these polls had a special significance as for the past five years they had faced intimidation, humiliation and vendetta.
“It is always the workers who suffer the worst,” state incharge Baghel said at the launch of the ‘Har booth, mazboot’ campaign in Fatehgarh Sahib town.
He said the Aam Aadmi Party in the state, like the Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre, “is the most vindictive party which believes in and practices vendetta politics. That is why it is important to defeat them both”. He said the Congress has never believed in vendetta politics.
Noting that the AAP was on the way out in Punjab, he said, the Congress was the only option for the state.
He predicted a five-cornered contest in Punjab this time. “The Congress is faced with a challenge from two governments; the BJP government at the Centre and the AAP in Punjab. They are two sides of the same coin,” he remarked, adding that there will be two more players, the Akalis and the Waris Punjab De. Exhorting the booth-level workers to work hard, Baghel said the fate of the party depends on them.
“Once you resolve to be strong to win, no matter how many Modis, Manns or Kejriwals come, nobody can defeat you,” he told the booth-level workers amid thundering cheer and applause.
Quoting party leader Rahul Gandhi, Baghel said these elections are going to be a battle for principles and ideology.
He said, “It is a battle to save the unity, brotherhood, harmony and the Constitution of the country which are under grave threat.”
He said both the BJP and AAP have no faith in the Constitution. He said today Punjab “is unsafe with drugs being peddled freely and the gangsters ruling the roost”.
He noted that people are killed in broad daylight by criminals who have no fear of law.
Speaking on the occasion, state party President Amarinder Singh Raja Warring said the AAP government was on the way out.
He said Mann was surviving on the Rs 1,000 crore advertisement budget. The moment the publicity stops, his oxygen supply will stop and his government will collapse.
Asserting that the Congress was strong and united, he said there can always be differences of opinion which is quite natural.
He said while the media is playing up the mere difference of opinion within the Congress, which has already been sorted out, it never mentioned that six AAP MPs defected to the BJP and 60 of their MLAs are in touch with the BJP.
He pointed out that no MP or MLA from the Congress defected to the BJP and yet the media was saying there was factionalism in the Congress.
Expressing gratitude to the party leadership, Warring said he has lived as a Congressman and will die as a Congressman only. He said the party had honoured and rewarded him a lot despite being so junior.
He said there were more senior and more competent leaders than him in the party like Partap Singh Bajwa, Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, Charanjit Singh Channi and others, whom he always respects.
--IANS
