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Bhattal blames Amarinder for defeat

CHANDIGARH, MAY 13. Holding the Punjab Chief Minister, Amarinder Singh, responsible for the rout of the ruling Congress in the State in the Lok Sabha elections, the Deputy Chief Minister, Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, today said she would take up the matter of ``change of leadership'' once again with the party high command.

``The people of Punjab have rejected Mr. Amarinder Singh and given the verdict in favour of Parkash Singh Badal,'' Ms Bhattal said while talking to reporters.

Alleging lacunae in the election campaign of the Congress, she said there had been no planning, no programme and no strategy by the Chief Minister and the Punjab Congress president, H. S. Hanspal, for the Lok Sabha polls.

Ms Bhattal said Capt Singh had been resting smug with a single point agenda of arresting Mr Badal and this has boomeranged on the Congress. ``This made Badal more popular.... his (Badal's) son has won with a very high margin,'' she added. Mr Badal's son Sukhbir Badal recorded the State's highest victory margin of over 1.36 lakh votes in Faridkot, defeating Karan Brar, a kin of the Chief Minister.

She said: "Tthe defeat of the Congress was visible four months back but Amarinder and Hanspal had been giving wrong feedback to the party high command''. ``Both (Amarinder and Hanspal) had misled the party high command,'' she alleged.

It was because of several ``wrong policies'' of the Chief Minister like the withdrawal of free power and water to farmers and of `shagun scheme' which alienated the people from the State Government, she said.

Even urban voters were unhappy with the Government, especially in Amritsar region, after Capt Singh took a decision on his own to induct ``terrorists like Harminder Singh Gill'' into the Congress party fold, Ms Bhattal added. She said: " He (Amarinder) has been taking decisions on his own without consulting anyone from among us, while Mr Hanspal has been acting irresponsibly.''

``He (Amarinder Singh) even did not allow me to speak at the rally of the party president, Sonia Gandhi, in Sunam,'' she regretted. Ms Bhattal said the show cause notice served on Rajpura MLA Raj Khurana by the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee just a couple of days before polling was another big mistake. ``We will seek inquiry into this matter as this seems to be a conspiracy against Raj Khurana,'' she said.

Stating that the Punjab Congress needed to review the entire situation in the given circumstances, Ms Bhattal said she would soon approach the party high command along with other senior party leaders of the State.

She said none of the promises made by Capt Singh during his patch-up with the Congress MLAs has been implemented.

``We were promised equal powers to both the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister, the removal of the Chief Minister's certain OSDs and advisors and free hand to ministers to function in their respective departments but none of these conditions were fulfilled,'' Ms Bhattal said. Ms Bhattal congratulated Ms Sonia Gandhi for the party's countrywide success.

UNI

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