Senior Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader and Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal today said that more than five lakh youth had been sacrificed at the altar of drugs by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in the last five years and demanded that chief minister Bhagwant Mann take responsibility for the crisis and step down immediately.
The Bathinda MP, who addressed huge enthusiastic women congregations at Ajnala and Dera Baba Nanak, said it was shocking that nearly every village in Punjab had reported an average of five drug related deaths in the last five years.
“If we take into account that there are 13,000 villages in Punjab, the death toll reaches five lakh in villages alone. If we take into account deaths occurring in towns and cities due to drugs this figure will increase by another few lakhs”.
Asserting that instead of coming clean and revealing the true scale of Punjab’s drug crisis, Mrs Harsimrat Badal said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was busy indulging in a cover up exercise. “Drug related deaths are not being registered as such. The AAP government has even gone to the extent of ‘abducting’ dead bodies like in the case of Daljit Singh of Bhamme Kalan and forcibly cremating another drug overdose victim – Bikramjit Singh of Batala”.
Stating that the women, who were the true victims of this cover up exercise, were demanding answers, Mrs Badal said “the women are asking Guru Dokhi chief minister Bhagwant Mann how many drug lords he had arrested till now? Why has he not busted the factories where ‘chitta’ is manufactured?”
She said instead of doing this, the chief minister was busy intimidating and torturing whistle blowers like Mohanjit Singh of Sheron and Gulzar Singh of Dirba.Asserting that so many lakh youth had not died during the period of militancy or any genocide and even the Covid pandemic, Mrs Badal said the AAP government had failed the people of Punjab.
She said now women themselves would have to take on the responsibility of confronting the drug mafia. She appealed to the women to join the Mai Bhago di Fauj created by the SAD and form ‘jathas’ in their villages to take on drug traffickers.
She urged the women to collate information about the drug traffickers as well as their patrons be it AAP politicians or police officers. “Once the next SAD government is formed a special task force headed by a woman DGP will be given the responsibility of probing all data recorded by the Mai Bhago Di Fauj members and ensure exemplary punishment to all drug offenders”.
She also detailed that a rehabilitation programme would also be initiated for drug addicts who would be skilled and given loans to make a new beginning. “A new law will also be introduced to deny bail to all drug traffickers for ten years besides seizing all their property to compensate their victims”, she added.
Answering a media query at Dera Baba Nanak, Mrs Harsimrat Badal condemned Sonia Gandhi for not apologizing for her family’s role in the genocide of Sikhs in Delhi and various other parts of the country in 1984 in her book ‘Belonging – A Journey of Love’ “Three successive generations of the Gandhi family have kept away from apologizing for this act of genocide which was planned and executed by the Congress party. They have even gone to the extent of making former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh apologize for the massacres but refrained from doing so themselves”.
Those who addressed the congregation at Ajnala included Jodh Singh Samra, Bibi Ravjit Kaur Samra ,Bibi Swaran Kaur Tera, Bibi Rajni Bala – Urban President,Bibi Rajwinder Kaur – Rural President, Ajnala ,Bibi Satwinder Kaur ,Shradha Rani ,Stage Secretary Bibi Amanpreet Kaur, Bibi Gurspurti Kaur Bhuregill and those at Dera Baba Nanak included Bibi Harbhajan Kaur Langah and Sukhjnider Singh Sonu Langah.