Congress politicised sacrilege issue: Sukhbir Badal

Amritsar, Jan 26 (IANS) Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) President Sukhbir Singh Badal said on Wednesday that the Congress has politicised the issue of sacrilege in the past five years due to which the Sikh community has still not received justice in the case.

Badal told the media after paying obeisance at the Golden Temple here that the Congress only perceived the issue of sacrilege as something which is to be used to weaken the SAD as it is the sole representative of the Sikh community.

"This is the reason that I prayed today that not only should nothing remain in the lives of all those who had politicised this sensitive issue, but that nothing remains of them in the forthcoming Assembly elections also," Sukhbir Badal said.

The SAD chief said it is shocking that the Congress government has not only politicised the cases of sacrilege, but it also refused to take concrete action in even recent cases of sacrilege.

In the case of sacrilege committed at Sri Darbar Sahib in which pages of the Gutka Sahib were thrown into the holy ‘sarovar', the accused had been caught and handed over to the police. "The police refused to even interrogate him to unveil the entire conspiracy behind the act," he said.

The SAD leader said that similarly, even the accused who had committed sacrilege in the sanctum sanctorum of Sri Harmandar Sahib had been cremated hurriedly without conducting any DNA tests to establish his identity.

Later, Sukhbir Badal addressed a public gathering at Majitha in support of party candidate Bikram Singh Majitha during the course of which he highlighted how a recent audio tape had established that DGP S. Chattopadhyay, who had registered ‘false' drugs case against Majithia, is in fact hand in glove with drug traffickers.

He said the aim of registering the case was to prevent Majithia from contesting the next elections.

"I appeal to the people of Majithia to defeat this conspiracy. It is now your responsibility to contest the injustice done to Majithia. I appeal to you to work hard to elect Majithia with double the margin than before to give a befitting response to the trio of Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi, Home Minister Sukhjinder Randhawa and Pradesh Congress President Navjot Sidhu," he said.

Speaking about the upcoming elections, Sukhbir Badal said the SAD-BSP alliance is cruising towards a clear victory with more than 80 seats.

He said people have recognised the fact that the SAD-BSP combine alone could safeguard their regional aspirations and would never hand over their mandate to outsiders controlled by forces in Delhi.

"You will witness AAP facing a rout by winning only five seats in its supposed stronghold of Malwa. The Congress will be totally obliterated," he added.

The 117-member Punjab Assembly will go to the polls on February 20, and the counting of ballots will be taken up on March 10.