Punjab CM Amarinder Singh took on the Pakistani establishment and its army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, and advised PM Imran Khan to rein the army in.
Chandigarh: Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh said Sunday that the opening of the Kartarpur corridor was “a game plan of the ISI”, adding that a “bigger conspiracy seems to have been hatched by the Pakistan Army against India”.
The chief minister, who was unwell and absented himself from his pet project, the Military Literature Festival that ended in Chandigarh Sunday, told a TV channel in an interview that Pakistan was attempting to revive militancy in Punjab, and thus, everyone should be wary of all its overtures, no matter how grand they appear to be.
Asked why he opted not to go to Pakistan for the ground-breaking ceremony of the Kartarpur corridor, Amarinder said he declined the invite because he could not think of going there while Indian soldiers and civilians were being killed by the Pakistan Army.
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‘Advised Sidhu not to go’
On the issue of Navjot Sidhu’s visit to Pakistan for the ground-breaking ceremony, Amarinder said he had told Sidhu that he had declined the invite by writing a letter to Pakistan’s minister for foreign affairs, and had also shared a copy of the same on social media. Despite his advice, Sidhu went ahead due to his friendship with Imran Khan, said the chief minister, adding that this was “not unreasonable”.
He said he himself has many friends there, including the former chief minister of Pakistani Punjab, Parvez Elahi. “We had been meeting frequently during my previous tenure and Elahi had also been coming to meet me in Patiala,” said Amarinder.
Amarinder said Sidhu always spoke in a forthright manner, and his only problem was that “sometimes he shoots before he thinks”.
‘Only a credit war’
Amarinder said the Sidhu affair was being unnecessarily hyped, and those raising it had clearly failed to see the ISI game plan. He lashed out at the Akalis for branding the Punjab minister as a ‘stooge’ of the Pakistani PM.
He dismissed it as nothing more than a ‘credit war’, lambasting the Akalis and the BJP central leadership for indulging in unwarranted controversy over his relations with Sidhu in a bid to divert public attention from the core issue of Pakistan’s continued and deliberate perpetration of terror activities in Punjab with the ultimate aim of destabilising the border state.
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‘Imran should rein in army’
Amarinder said Imran Khan was undoubtedly making efforts to bring peace, tranquillity and harmony with India, but at the same time, he should also prevail upon the Pakistan Army brass to ensure that the killings of Indian soldiers at borders were stopped immediately.
He said Pakistan’s history reveals that if any PM wants to stay in power, he has to toe the army’s line, citing the example of Nawaz Sharif’s agreement with the army in Dubai, which led to his continuation as prime minister.
He warned Pakistan against carrying on with its nefarious designs and urged it to desist from trying to foment trouble in Punjab. He also asked Pakistan to put an immediate end to the killing of Indian soldiers at the borders.
Amarinder said General Bajwa should understand that the Punjab Police was fully geared up to take Pakistan head-on if it continued to the vitiate peaceful atmosphere of the state through terror. He advised Bajwa not to compare Punjab with the 1970s and 1980s, when its police force was a meagre 16,000-17,000. The force now was well equipped with high tech weapons and ammunition to effectively tackle any challenging task, he asserted.
The CM also lashed out at Sikhs For Justice, which calls itself a “human rights advocacy group” for abetting terrorism in Punjab by whipping up the religious sentiments of Sikhs. He said that the people of Punjab, especially the Sikhs from rural areas, would not lend support to its so-called ‘Referendum 2020’. The SFJ’s claims of the Kartarpur corridor being a gift from Pakistan also had no takers in Punjab, he said.
Sidhu should be treated as a traitor and sacked right away. He should be tried in the court and put behind the bars till death. What a shameless person.