New Delhi:
Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has said the whole ruckus in the assembly due to allegations that targeted him with claims that he came to the house under the influence happened because the Opposition had no real issues to raise.
The Congress yesterday demanded that the chief minister should get an “alcohol test” done after the opposition claimed that the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader came to the assembly “drunk”.
“They have no issues to raise. What test should be done?” Mann told news agency ANI.
The chief minister’s response came following a high drama in the Punjab assembly, with the AAP and Congress duelling over the Opposition’s allegation against Mann and their demand.
“What should we even do coming to the assembly where the chief minister is in an inebriated state? What is the purpose of holding a session when the head of the state is completely sozzled? We demand that everyone’s test be conducted,” Leader of Opposition in the assembly Partap Singh Bajwa said.
BJP leader and Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta also criticised Mann over the allegations, calling it “disgraceful” and a matter of concern for the country.
“Shame on you, it’s disgraceful. In the temple of democracy, no state head should show up in an inebriated state and bring shame to the entire state. Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has been seen by the world hundreds of times inebriated at public events, but today it crossed all limits when the entire country saw his condition – how he was speaking in the assembly while intoxicated,” Gupta alleged.
“How can a person who lives in a drunken stupor save the people of his state from addiction? Does Arvind Kejriwal have any answer? They talk about addiction. Will he run the state with such people…” she said.
Punjab Finance Minister Harpal Cheema slammed the Opposition and called the allegations against the chief minister an attempt to distract from a land encroachment case allegedly linked to Congress MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira.
“A report on this matter was released today. Upon the report’s release, the MLA became agitated and led his party colleagues in a walkout from the assembly. This incident highlights the extent of the land mafia’s influence within the Congress party,” Cheema said.
“They spare no one – not even their own kin or the land belonging to their villages and panchayats. They had evidently caught wind of the report; the investigation we commissioned found the MLA encroached upon a significant amount of land,” the Punjab minister said.
Amid all this, the Punjab AAP won a confidence motion in the 117-member assembly. The party has a majority with 94 MLAs; 16 MLAs are from the Congress, one MLA is from the BSP, and three MLAs are from the Akali Dal. Two MLAs are from the BJP and one is an independent MLA.
The confidence vote comes days after the AAP faced a setback when seven of its 10 Rajya Sabha MPs including Raghav Chadha, Sandeep Pathak and Harbhajan Singh resigned and merged with the BJP.
