Why Badal asks Punjab politicians to desist from blaming each other?

By Satinder Bains
CHANDIGARH: Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal has time and again been insisting that political leaders shall desist from mudslinging on each other. He repeated his statement at a function in Sangrur district on August 9 but this is not first time that he made such an observation. Hardly he was ever heard asking opposition to pin point shortcomings of his government.

Even in Punjab Vidhan Sabha he seemed taking initiative to sink differences with opposition party leaders and persuading them not to desist from blaming each other. It is strange that a person who was Chief Minister for five terms and consider himselfa a champion of democracy and a statesman politician is making such undemocratic and shameful statements.

Badal is well aware that he and his party were ar receiving end and he is facing flak for failure on all fronts. Rather he is principal accused in pushing the state into state of economic bankruptcy and eastablishing mafia culture in the state. Though his son Sukhbir Singh Badal has created all the mess and ruined the agriculture and industrial sector and politicised the whole government working but as a father and guardian of state, Badal is more responsible for all the instability than anybody else.

It is in this context that Badal was repeatedly trying to put immoral pressure on opposition leaders to compromise with the ruling clan and let the corruption and misrule continue. He would mean that if opposition comes to power he would also keep his mouth shut against the government and let the people of state sufer. He is forgetting that criticising the wrong doings of ruling party is moral and democratic responsbility of the opposition parties. It is basic rule for a healthy democracy. If opposition leaders are blaming Badal family and his relatives for protecting sand,transport and liquor mafia and questioning them for promoting corruption and lawlessness, what is wrong in it. Shall they not ask Badal to answer their questions ?

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Badal while speaking in the Vidhan Sabha has advocated that it was bad trend that political leaders are mudslinging on each other. Does he mean to hide the dirty linen and loot the state in compromise. He was referring to certain statements by former Chief Minister Cap Amarinder Singh and PPCC President Partap Singh Bajwa. He even threatened Bajwa on the floor of house that government has a file of past cases against him. If Badal is pressurising opposition leaders to desist from making accusations against his family and the government, he is far from the status of statesman politician which he has bestowed upon himself.

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is consistently pointing out that Congress, BJP and their allies are two sides of same coin and they are compromising on the public issues. This is what Badal is exactly justifying by inviting opposition leaders to compromise with him. Badals's politics of compromise with critics and patting each other has ruined Punjab and it is time for opposition parties to take a decisive stand against one family rule and expose the misdeeds of corrupt regime. Otherwise there is wide space open to occupy for alternative political parties.