Politics of revenge

 

 

Call it payback time or settling of scores or anything else you would. Captain Amarinder Singh’s politics of aggression, which he introduced during his rule of five years in Punjab, has come home to roost. The Akali-BJP alliance Government Chief Parkash Singh Badal, who had been at the receiving end in the previous regime, is getting back at Amarinder and his cronies.

The developments in recent weeks seem exactly like a replay of the happenings five years ago when Amarinder Singh, who is under fire now, was at the helm of affairs. The script is exactly the same: alleged corruption, raids and arrests.

UPDATE

Now it is Badal's chance to hit back at Amarinder

Noone knows the fate of old cases against Badal

Embarassment for the Raja of Patiala and his MP wife



In 2002, when the Congress had come to power in the state, it launched an anti-corruption drive by booking Badal and his MP son Sukhbir Singh Badal, who is now the acting president of the SAD. Surinder Kaur Badal wife of Badal senior was also booked for accepting bribe on behalf of the then Chief Minister. The father and son duo were sent to judicial custody in December 2002. Later, after a long litigation spread over 5 years, that went up to the Supreme Court, the Punjab Vigilance Bureau directly presented a charge-sheet before the Special Court in Ropar in 2007 regarding disproportionate assets worth Rs 78 crores amassed by Badals. The case is still under process. In 2002, as many as nine other Akali ministers were booked on charges of corruption. Ironically, none of the corruption cases registered against the Akalis reached its logical end during the Congress regime. Today, Amarinder Singh has been booked for allegedly minting money in the Ludhiana City Center project worth several hundred crores.