Ludhiana: Former Punjab chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi claimed that both the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Arvind Kejriwal were anti-Dalit and poor people. Referring to the party not appointing a Dalit deputy chief minister, as promised before the 2022 assembly elections, Channi claimed that CM Bhagwant Singh Mann and AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal did not participate in the programmes organised in the memory of Dalit gurus.
Channi said that Kejriwal projected himself as a common man by wearing slippers and travelling in auto-rickshaws, but soon after coming to power, he started travelling in helicopters and staying in luxury hotels. On Wednesday, Channi said, a government programme was organised in Jalandhar on the occasion of Kabir Jayanti and both Mann and Kejriwal were supposed to attend it. However, he claimed that despite being in Jalandhar, both returned without attending the event. He added that Kejriwal and Mann spent time in a friend’s factory after inaugurating a park located about three kilometres from the Kabir Jayanti programme venue. He also said that the Kabir Bhawan was constructed during the Congress government at a cost of Rs 12 crore.
Channi claimed that the AAP government did not pay attention to cleaning of the sarovar at the Bhagwan Valmiki Teerth in Amritsar, which, had been made using the machinery procured by the Congress government at expense of crores.
The former CM said that the AAP government did not implement the project of building a research centre on the life of Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar for Rs 100 crore at the Technical University in Kapurthala.
He claimed that during his tenure as CM, he presented a cheque of Rs 25 crore to the Dera Sachkhand Ballan management to build a study centre devoted to Guru Ravidas’s teachings at Dera Ballan, the holy place of Guru Ravidas. Channi alleged that the cheque was taken back by Kejriwal. On the eve of Lok Sabha elections, Kejriwal and Bhagwant Mann reached the dera to present the same cheque but the amount of Rs 25 crore has not been released to the dera so far, he claimed.
“I genuinely want to ask CM Mann and Kejriwal what their issues are with poor and Dalit people,” Channi asked.
He said that before the assembly elections, votes were collected by filling forms promising to give Rs 1,000 per month to women but after 40 months, women had not received anything.
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Courtesy : TOI
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