Farmers Movement Archive

SAD, BJP play blame game over alliance break up

LUDHIANA: With SAD breaking the almost two decade old alliance with the BJP over farm bills, local Akali leaders are considering this step a wise decision even as the BJP leadership considers these in favour of farmers. However, both parties’ leaders claimed that they were ready to contest upcoming elections on their own. SAD district president Ranjit Dhillon said, “This alliance was done to improve the Hindu-Sikh relations in Punjab and since then the environment in Punjab had changed for good. But for the past six years we were being ignored continuously even then we kept on supporting BJP at every level.” He said BJP ignored that party leaders who had supported them when they had only a handful of seats in the Parliament. Regarding future alliance with any other party, he said this decision had to be taken at core committee level, but they have candidates on all 117 seats in the state. Meanwhile, SAD MLA from Dakha constituency Manpreet Ayali said this decision was the need of the hour and all party workers were demanding this for a long time. However, state vice-president of BJP Parveen Bansal said, “SAD has broken this alliance, not the BJP, so they can tell why they have taken this step. As far as BJP is concerned, we have achieved from just two seats to 303 in the Parliament. We have done it at our level in Haryana and in Maharashtra, so we will do it in Punjab as well. We are prepared for any challenge in the coming days.” BJP district president Pushpinder Singal said, “In 2017 assembly polls we lost because of Akali Dal and their misdeeds. People had asked us to break this alliance at that time only but we continued with them. Even now they have broken the alliance, not us.” He said party was ready to contest all 117 seats in Punjab and if he got an order right now, he had six clean image candidates for constituencies of Ludhiana.

The Times of India

2020-09-28

Ludhiana