Following the announcement of bypolls to four Assembly seats in Punjab on October 21, the Congress and the Shiromani Akali Dal have lost no time in firing salvos at each other.
Union Minister and SAD leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Saturday accused the Congress government of ‘refusing’ to honour its commitments to pay the State’s share in the GST to the highest sacred place of the Sikh religion the Golden Temple, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Sunday hit back alleging Ms. Badal of exploiting religion for her petty political gains by spreading falsehood.
“Bereft of any meaningful political issue to fight the bypolls, Harsimrat and the rest of the Akali leadership are again resorting to outright fabrications in a desperate bid to deceive the people, who had repeatedly rejected them since the 2017 Assembly elections,” he said.
The Chief Minister said the Union Minister’s statement had not even an iota of truth. “The fact is the State government had not only notified 100% GST refund for Punjab’s share in respect of Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple), Durgiana Mandir, Amritsar and Valmik Sthal, Ram Tirath, Amritsar but had also allocated a whopping ₹4 crore to the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, in May for the same,” he said.
“With falsehoods, Harsimrat is evidently trying to claw her party’s way back into the Punjab electoral scene, from which the Akalis had virtually disappeared in the past three years or so.”
The bypolls to the Phagwara, Jalalabad, Dakha and Mukerian Assembly constituencies will be held on October 21 and results will be declared on October 24. The Jalalabad and the Phagwara seats fell vacant after Sukhbir Badal of the Akali Dal and BJP’s Som Parkash were elected to the Lok Sabha. The Dakha seat fell vacant after former Aam Aadmi Party MLA H.S. Phoolka resigned in January this year while the Mukerian seat fell vacant last month after the death of Congress MLA Rajnish Kumar Babbi.
Ms. Badal alleged that while the Centre had been releasing its share of the GST to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee on the purchases made for the ‘Langar’, the Congress government in Punjab had been refusing to pay its share despite repeated assurances at the highest level. “The pendency has touched a whopping ₹3.27 crore,” she alleged.
