Congress always treated Akal Takht with respect: Amarinder Singh

Chandigarh: In a stinging response to Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal's latest tirade at his government, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Sunday reminded her that it was her own Shiromani Akali Dal regime that had shamelessly heaped humiliation on the Akal Takht Jathedar.

On the contrary, his government has always treated the Sikh temporal seat with exemplary respect, he said.

"For 10 years, the Akalis, including Harsimrat Kaur, had been totally drunk on power, sparing neither the Akal Takht nor the people of Punjab from their tyrannical control," said the Chief Minister, asking the Union Minister to "stop indulging in such blatant falsehoods for her petty political gains".

"Everyone knows how you (Akalis) maliciously ill-treated Akal Takht Jathedars out of sheer arrogance, and continue to abuse the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) by dictating terms to them," Amarinder Singh said, reacting to Harsimrat Kaur's allegations about his government over the issue of joint celebrations of Guru Nanak Dev's 550th birth anniversary.

"She has no scruples, none of the Akalis have..." said the Chief Minister in a statement, pointing out that while Harsimrat Kaur was singing praises for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government, her husband and Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal, was going around appealing for forfeiture of the BJP candidates' deposits in the campaign for the Haryana elections.

"Their obnoxious double standards had long been exposed to the people of Punjab, who have outright rejected the Akali leadership time and again, since their absolute rout in the 2017 Assembly polls in the state," he said.