Amarinder Singh replaced as his govt was being run by BJP from Delhi, says Priyanka Gandhi
Kotkapura(PTI): Senior Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Sunday said the former chief minister Amarinder Singh-led Punjab government had to be replaced as it was being run by the BJP from Delhi.
She also attacked the Aam Aadmi Party, accusing it of doing nothing in Delhi and said its government has been a "failure".
Vadra was addressing a "Navi Soch, Nava Punjab" public meeting here ahead of the upcoming Punjab Assembly polls.
Referring to Singh's tenure as chief minister, Vadra, 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 not by the Congress but by the BJP and the BJP-led government," she said.
"That hidden nexus has come out in the open today. That is why we had to change that government," the Congress general secretary added.
Singh resigned as chief minister in September last year following a bitter power tussle with state Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu.
Singh later quit the Congress and launched his own party, Punjab Lok Congress (PLC).
The PLC is contesting the state assembly polls in alliance with the BJP and the Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa-led Shiromani Akali Dal (Sanyukt).
Hitting out at the AAP over its Delhi model, Vadra cautioned voters against falling for the party's claims.
"There is another political party which has come from Delhi. You are being shown a Delhi model through advertisements and people come to you and propagate the Delhi model and the (work done by the) government in Delhi," she said.
Vadra told the people at the gathering that they should not forget that the BJP came to power at the Centre in 2014 on the basis of the Gujarat model.
"There were big advertisements (claiming) so much development took place in Gujarat, everybody is getting rich, everything is prosperous. But what happened? That model was only in advertisements," she said.
The AAP government has been a "failure" in Delhi, she said.
Punjab goes to the polls on February 20. The counting of votes will be taken up on March 10.
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Congress using hijab issue to pacify minority anger, alleges Karnataka LoP R Ashoka
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.
Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.
He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.
Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.
He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.
Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.
He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.
