Salaria has an immoral track record: AAP’s Khaira
GURDASPUR:Leader of opposition Sukhpal Singh Khaira on Thursday accused SAD-BJP candidate Swaran Salaria of having “an immoral track record” and indulging in corrupt practices to run the Chintpurni Medical College in Pathankot, owned by Salaria.
Taking a dig at Salaria, Khaira said in December 2014, Salaria was booked under rape charges at Vakola police station in Mumbai, following allegations by an air hostess. The case has now been closed. “Salaria may have silenced the aggrieved woman with his money power but the case has brought out a villainous character of the BJP candidate,” Khaira said.
The AAP leader also accused Salaria of “spoiling” careers of “hundreds of youth” from Gurdaspur at his Chintpurni Medical College and Hospital. “The future of students from this college is hanging fire since 2011 after the Medical Council of India (MCI) refused to allow its operations, citing anomalies in its functioning.”
He added that despite the MCI’s observation, Salaria continued to admit students in 2014, 2015 and 2016. The Punjab and Haryana high court has recently ordered that these students should be shifted to other medical colleges in the state, Khaira said.
“With this, Salaria has not only embezzled crores from the students by offering them medical seats, but has also indulged in corrupt practices by cheating his own electorate,” he said.
Challenging Salaria for an open debate with Khajuria, Khaira said its difficult to understand how the people of Gurdaspur can trust a man with such “nefarious track record”.
Speaking on the Centre’s taxation policy, Khaira said the BJP must be taught a lesson for “discriminating against” the state’s industry.
He said that, “at the cost of Punjab”, the Modi government has extended the industrial tax holiday by 10 years for hill states like Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.
He claimed that more than 30,000 small and medium scale industrial units have either closed down or shifted out of Punjab because of the differential tax policies of successive central governments.
Meanwhile, he also took a dig at Congress candidate Sunil Jakhar and said after being rejected from Abohar assembly seat and Ferozpur Lok Sabha seat, he is aiming at his “political rehabilitation” through the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha byelection.
‘Sulking’ Bajwa to join campaign on October 1
CHANDIGARH: The Congress was never united in Gurdaspur. The rivalry among its political dynasties runs deep, from fathers to sons.
The Lok Sabha bypoll has once again redrawn the battle lines between Rajya Sabha MP Partap Singh Bajwa, who is also former Gurdaspur MP, and state rural development minister Tript Rajinder Bajwa; and Dera Baba Nanak MLA Sukhjinder Randhawa, a contender for a ministerial berth. The fathers of all three too were regional satraps of the Congress and the turf war is part of the legacy.
But as the six-month-old Captain Amarinder Singh government faces a daunting bypoll test, the absence of Partap Bajwa from the campaign scene may give the Congress candidate Sunil Jakhar’s camp some anxious moments.
Dovetailing compulsion with strategy, Jakhar’s campaign managers are projecting Bajwa’s younger brother, Fateh Jang, literally in the driver’s seat. Fateh drove Jakhar to file nomination papers and was one of the faces in the photo op along with Jakhar and the CM. Fateh is also campaigning for Jakhar in Qadian, the seat he now represents after Bajwa’s wife, Charanjit, made way for him in the February polls.
But as the campaign scene hots up at Gurdaspur, Bajwa is in New Delhi to meet top leadership of the party. The Rajya Sabha MP says he will join the campaign on October 1.
The BJP, which has been attacking Jakhar as an “outsider”, is also trying to cash in on the “lack of unity” in the Congress. State BJP chief Vijay Sampla on Thursday said Kavita (Vinod Khanna’s wife) was by the side of party’s candidate, Swaran Singh Salaria, when he filed the nomination papers and also at the rally. “But where is Congress former Gurdaspur MP Partap Bajwa. The Congress is still fighting over the candidate,” he said while talking to reporters in Pathankot. Kavita too had staked her claim for ticket to the Lok Sabha seat after her husband’s death in April.
Bajwa has claimed that he got tickets for six out of nine assembly candidates in Gurdaspur Lok Sabha (barring Sukhjinder, Tript and minister Aruna Chaudhary who represents Dinanagar seat), of whom five won. But with his once bête noire Amarinder as the CM, none of the sitting MLAs except his brother, Fateh, have openly supported the candidature of his wife.
While the Jakhar camp sees no alarm bells in Bajwa’s absence from the poll scene as all the seven Congress MLAs, including Fateh, are campaigning for the party nominee, Bajwa loyalists contend he cannot be overlooked on his home turf, as he has earlier secured wins for himself, wife, brother and some other MLAs and the 2014 Lok Sabha defeat was an exception to his winning spree.
Both the defeated candidates too, Bajwa claims, had pledged their support to Charanjit for the Lok Sabha contest of 2019.
Free power to Punjab farmers to continue, says Rana Gurjit
MISUSE CHARGES Meters to be installed at tubewells that are not being used for farming; says affluent people are misusing the facility
How can Sukhbir call Jakhar outsider, he contested polls from Jalalabad but lives in Bathinda. Jakhar is the only candidate capable of winning Gurdaspur bypolls.
RANA GURJIT SINGH, state power and irrigation minister
KAPURTHALA: The power and irrigation minister Rana Gurjit Singh on Thursday said that the state government will continue to provide free power supply to the farmers here.
He clarified that the government is planning to install electricity meters on the tubewells, installed at farm houses by the people who are not farming using the tubewells.
The minister said many affluent people are misusing the facility meant for needy farmers.
The government will issue bills to the people who have installed pump sets at their farm houses and are not paying the bills, he said.
Personal attack, fight for Gurdaspur seat gets ugly
Ravi Dhaliwal
Tribune News Service
Gurdaspur, September 28
Politicians have started raking up personal issues with state BJP chief Vijay Sampla claiming that Sunil Jakhar is “a true outsider as his wife belongs to Switzerland and people would have to travel to that country to get their work done since he spends maximum time there”.Jakhar was quick to react and claimed that “the outsider debate is irrational as somebody has to come from somewhere”.He said: “If Capt Amarinder Singh, who was tagged as an outsider when he contested the 2014 parliamentary poll from Amritsar, could beat Arun Jaitley by more than 1 lakh votes, what is stopping me from doing so? Indian politics is replete with innumerable such examples. Sampla should check his words carefully before speaking in public.”On the personal front, Sampla went a step ahead by drawing parallels between the in-laws of Swaran Salaria and Jakhar’s. “Salaria’s in-laws are in Tanda Urmur village on the border of Gurdaspur and Pathankot, while Jakhar has his in-laws in Switzerland. It is a known fact that he spends a lot of time there,” he claimed.AAP leader Sukhpal Khaira, too, launched a personal attack at Salaria by issuing a press note in which he made a reference to a Mumbai airhostess who had filed a case against the BJP candidate a few years ago. He also made a reference to Chintpurni Medical College and Hospital, which is owned by Salaria.