Amid speculation over possibility of re-alliance between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), BJP national secretary Manjinder Singh Sirsa on Tuesday said the saffron party will contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls in Punjab in alliance with Shiromani Akali Dal- Samyukta (SAD-S) led by Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa.
Speaking to reporters in Amritsar, Sirsa said BJP has an alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal (Samyukta) and the party’s leadership has decided to contest all 13 seats on its own. He said though Akali Dal’s praise for Prime Minister Narendra Modi government was a welcome step, there was no talk of alliance at all and the party had told us that we will contest all 13 seats on our own.
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Responding to a question about the Opposition alliance, Indian National Democratic Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), Sirsa said that this was an opportunistic alliance of the most corrupt leaders of the country and has been formed to save each other.
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He said that anybody can watch old videos of Delhi Chief Minister and AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal who used to level serious allegations of corruption against NCP leader Sharad Pawar and Congress former president Sonia Gandhi besides others.
Sirsa said Kejriwal was himself involved in corruption like liquor scam and now he has forged alliance with those very people whom he used to label as corrupt.
On the statement of Congress leader Partap Singh Bajwa ruling out an alliance with AAP in Punjab, the BJP leader said he was himself surprised that when the AAP government was arresting former ministers of Congress on corruption charges how can they come together. He also said that both parties have no ideology of their own.
Lashing out at Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, Sirsa said that he used to ridicule large security convoys of others and now he was himself using 200 car convoys for travelling. He said the Aam Aadmi Party was looting the government treasury of Punjab for promotion of their party.
Stepping up his attack on the BJP-led Odisha government, Leader of the Opposition and Biju Janata Dal (BJD) president Naveen Patnaik on Friday accused it of failing the state's most vulnerable citizens over the non-disbursal of social security pensions to nearly 18 lakh beneficiaries for the last three months, and urged Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi to ensure immediate release of the pending payments.
The BJP on Friday accused the Congress of being responsible for the declining relevance of the INDIA bloc, claiming that the alliance is facing an existential crisis due to the opposition party’s “opportunistic and self-serving politics”.
The Border Security Force recovered a large cache of weapons, including an AK-47 rifle and 25 pistols, in Punjab's Amritsar district during an intelligence-based operation. An Indian national has been detained and is being questioned.
