Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Convener and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, along with Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, inaugurated projects worth Rs 1,125 crore at Maur Mandi in Bhatinda on Sunday. This was Kejriwal’s third trip to Punjab in a month after Gurdaspur on December 2 and Hoshiarpur on November 18.
Kejriwal is scheduled to go on a 10-day Vipassana retreat from December 19, the day the Opposition alliance INDIA will have their next meeting. Incidentally, it was Guru Tegh Bahadur’s martyrdom day.
Speaking at the rally, Kejriwal said, “In 75 years of India’s and Punjab’s history, the state was ruled by the Akalis, Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Has anyone announced a package of Rs 1,125 crore for Bhatinda till date?”
Elaborating how the money would be spent, Kejriwal said that seven new state-of-the-art schools, 13 new mohalla clinics, hospitals, overbridge, sewers and roads would be built and a new bus stand would be added.
In the past few days, Mann and Kejriwal announced Rs 1,850-crore package for Gurdaspur and an Rs 850 crore package for Hoshiarpur.
Challenging the Akalis, Congress and the BJP to give an account of the work they had done for Punjab, Kejriwal said that Mann’s biggest work is that he made electricity free in Punjab. The AAP boss also emphasized on the reforms that the Mann government is trying to achieve in 20,000 government schools. Similarly, he stressed on the reforms in health care, employment generated and regularization of the contractual staff. “Next time, we will get 110 of the 117 seats. Every house is impacted positively in Punjab, whether it is relief from electricity bills, admission of children in schools, pilgrimage or relief from having to pay bribes. In the Lok Sabha elections give us 13 out of 13 seats, strengthen our hands,” Kejriwal urged the Punjab voters.
Mann said, “We are building Aam aadmi clinics. The Central government felt that Punjabis have to be kept sick. Let them keep playing kushti, kabbadi, let them be addicted to drugs and stopped giving funds. Similarly, when they saw agriculture prosper, they withheld the rural development fund for the mandi boards worth Rs 5,500 crore. When we started teerth yatra and booked trains paying for it, seeing that people are becoming spiritual and obtaining the blessings of the Gururs, they did not give us trains for the 7th and the 15th. Railways sent a mail saying that it does not have engines. So they will not let you offer prayers also. They have stooped so low.”
Mann targeted former Punjab CM Captain Amarinder Singh and MP Sunil Jhakhar who are now with the BJP. “If they could, they would delete Punjab from the national anthem and add UP instead. Punjab is the first region that is mentioned. Instead of Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha, they will make it UP, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha. It is not a big deal for them. They just have to bring a bill.”
Mann also took potshots at the Prime Minister on the latter’s slogan of “double engine ki sarkar chahiye”. Showing his mobile phone, ostensibly referring to a mail by the Indian railways that said it did not have engines to spare for the teerth yatra programme, Mann said, “Railways says that it does not have any engines, and you are talking of a double engine sarkar. First, give us engines from the Railways. You have double engines in Rajasthan and MP.”
Kejriwal also echoed Mann and took the central government to task for withholding funds and not sparing engines for the state’s teerth yatra programme and assured the thousands who had gathered that the Mann government will find a way around these obstacles just as he had done in Delhi.
“This is not an election rally. People throng election rallies. Today, we are here to give a package of Rs 1,125 crore and people have come to express their happiness,” said the AAP chief.
The AAP is confident of a good showing in Punjab in the upcoming general elections and is not leaving anything to chance. While in Delhi, the party cadre is spurring the citizens for a favorable opinion in case the chief minister is arrested through a door-to-door campaign, in Punjab, every big-ticket announcement is becoming an occasion for mass-contact programmes. Both Kejriwal and Mann want to keep that contact alive. Meticulously organized, and with AAP’s entire top brass on the stage, these ‘Vikas Kranti’ rallies in Punjab have sounded the poll bugle for the party in Punjab.