AAP, Congress write to Prez to dismiss Badal govt

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress, in separate submissions to President Pranab Mukherjee, have demanded dismissal of the Prakash Singh Badal government in Punjab.

Both parties have accused the Badal family of using the state machinery for promoting their own interests, and claimed “breakdown of constitutional machinery” in the state. They were protesting against the death of a teenage girl after she was molested and thrown off a bus in Moga.  

“The provisions of the Constitution and the law of the land are being openly flouted by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and his son, Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, purely to further their business interests and illegal financial gains,” wrote senior AAP leader H S Phoolka.

“The people of Punjab and citizens all over the country and abroad have been outraged and greatly pained by the appalling incident of the molestation and murder of a 13-year-old girl in the Moga district of Punjab,” he said. “What makes the incident all the more revolting is the direct admitted involvement of the chief minister and deputy chief minister of Punjab.”

In his letter to the President, Punjab Congress president Partap Singh Bajwa has asked for the “dismissal of the Parkash Singh Badal government for converting this once most prosperous region into a mafia state”.

”This is to bring to your urgent notice the rapidly deteriorating law and order situation in the state of Punjab,” he said.  “The Badal family has reduced the once prosperous state of Punjab to their own personal fiefdom, resulting in the complete breakdown of law and order,” he wrote.

Bajwa also said the Badal family has virtually monopolized all economic activities in the state, be it transport, cable TV, sand mining, real estate, liquor, hospitality, renewable energy, government contracts or tenders.