'Badal chhat gaye..': Jairam Ramesh on Manpreet Badal's switch to the BJP

Former Punjab finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday, even as Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was leaving the state to enter Himachal Pradesh. As he joined the BJP in the presence of union commerce minister Piyush Goyal, Badal said that the Congress is a party that is at war with itself.

Badal, who had merged the People's Party of Punjab with the Congress in 2016, had resigned from the Congress on January 17 even when the Yatra was within Punjab. In his letter, which he posted on twitter, Badal said that he faced “disappointing disillusionment” within the party.

In reply, the Congress took a swipe at him, saying that the “clouds (badal) over the Punjab Congress have cleared”.

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Badal was not part of the Yatra during the six days when it passed through the state. In his letter, he said that when he became the finance minister, he “inherited an exchequer in shambles”, which was “truly on the brink of total collapse”. “I could either choose to continue to ignore numerical realities and pursue populist policies or I could accept the fact that difficult decisions were desperately needed. I chose the latter,” he wrote.

He added that his efforts were met with criticism. “However, far from being acknowledged or appreciated for my efforts, I was vilified in the Punjab Congress for failing to display what can only be described as fiscal recklessness,” Badal’s letter reads.

Badal further complained of factionalism in the party. “Suffice it to say, that the manner in which the Congress party has conducted its affairs and taken decisions, specifically with regards to Punjab, has been disheartening, to say the least. The coterie of men entrusted with the authority to dictate Delhi's writ to the Punjab unit of the Congress are far from sound,” he wrote.

Congress chief spokesperson Jairam Ramesh took to twitter to take a jibe at Badal. “A man who left Akali Dal to make his own party and then joined the Congress, was made Finance Minister for five years, then lost by a record margin of over 60k and thereafter went into hibernation now joins BJP. Punjab Congress par se badal chhat gaye..,” Ramesh wrote in his tweet.