Former minister and veteran Akali-Jagdish Singh Garcha joins SAD

Ludhiana: Ahead of parliamentary elections, former minister and veteran Akali leader Jagdish Singh Garcha joined the Shiromani Akali Dal along with his family and supporters in the presence of party president Sukhbir S Badal on Thursday.

Welcoming the Garcha family and their supporters into the party fold at the former’s residence, the SAD president said Garcha was a very close associate of former chief minister Parkash Singh Badal and had stood alongside him through thick and thin. “It gives me great joy that the Akali family, which had parted ways from the party for some reasons, has joined the SAD fold again following my appeal to all panthic forces to unite under the banner of the SAD”.

Sukhbir Badal said “national parties treat Punjab as a province of the East India Company and want to annex it instead of trying to win the hearts of the people of the State”. Badal said “for us the safeguarding the interests of Punjab and Punjabis is of paramount interest”.

He said “Once the SAD is returned to power no gangster or their patrons will remain in the state”. He also asserted that eradicating the menace of drugs was the number one priority of the SAD. He claimed all major infrastructure works be it flyovers, bridges, sewerage systems or beautification projects had come about during SAD tenure. He said during the seven years of Congress and AAP rule, the city had suffered with all development work coming to a halt even as the civic infrastructure was in a state of mess.

Replying to a media query, he said the AAP government had decided to notify silos in several districts of the State and privatize the government procurement system on the orders of the central government. “Chief minister Bhagwant Mann fears that he will also be arrested on the pattern of Arvind Kejriwal and that is why he is toeing the central line on all issues”. The SAD president also said that the AAP government in Punjab had also perpetrated a liquor scam on the pattern of the Delhi liquor scam. “The Punjab excise policy was tailored on the Delhi policy and even liquor contracts were given to the same persons”.

He said the AAP and Congress were indulging in a mock fight in Punjab. He said both these parties were aligned at the centre and that Bhagwant Mann had even shared the stage with the Congress leadership in Delhi recently. “However both parties are trying to mislead the people in Punjab”, he added.