Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi said that former chief minister Amarinder Singh-led government in Punjab was being run by the BJP-led Centre from Delhi.
Addressing ‘Navi Soch Nava Punjab’ rally in Punjab’s Kotkapura, Gandhi said that Charanjit Singh Channi was made the Chief Minister of Punjab as there were some deficiencies in the Amarinder Singh government.
Referring to Singh’s tenure as chief minister, Gandhi, without naming him, said, “It is true that for five years we had a government here, it is also true that there were some deficiencies in that government. It got lost somewhere on the way. That government stopped running from Punjab. That government started being run from Delhi and that too was not by the Congress but by the BJP and the BJP-led government.”
“That hidden nexus has come out in the open today. That is why we had to change that government,” the Congress general secretary said, referring to the pre-poll alliance between the BJP and Amarinder Singh’s new party, the Punjab Lok Congress.
This is the first time that anyone from the Gandhi family broke their silence on the change of leadership in the state.
Amarinder Singh, a longtime loyalist of the Gandhi family, had stepped down from the post of Punjab Chief Minister in September last year after a bitter power tussle with state’s Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu.
In his resignation letter, Singh had said that rather than being reined in, Sidhu was patronised by Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi.
He had also said that Congress chief Sonia Gandhi had “turned a blind eye” to the “shenanigans of this gentleman who was aided and abetted by the General Secretary in-charge Harish Rawat, perhaps the most dubious individual I had the occasion to make acquaintance off.”
Singh said that despite knowing him “for the better part of his 52 years in public life” and “that too at a deeply personal level”, Sonia Gandhi never “understood” him or his “character”.
Punjab will go to the polls on February 20. The counting of votes will be taken up on March 10.
