CAPT AMARINDER TAKES ON HARSIMRAT ON TWITTER AFTER HER PROVOCATIVE TWEET ON HIS AKAL TAKHT VISIT

MOUNTS SCATHING ATTACK ON BADALS FOR PLAYING `CHARADE OF NATIONALISM’ TO SELF-SERVE THEIR POLITICAL INTERESTS

Chandigarh, April 13:

Going on the offensive against the union minister’s unsavoury tirade, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Saturday took Akali leader and Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Twitter to question her great grandfather’s lavish dinner to General Dyer on the day of the barbaric Jallianwala Bagh.

          The Chief Minister mounted a scathing attack on Harsimrat, as well as her husband Sukhbir Badal and his father Prakash Singh Badal, after her blatantly politically motivated tweet, attacking Captain Amarinder on his visit to Akal Takht with Congress president Rahul Gandhi late last night.

          “Pb CM @capt_amarinder took @RahulGandhi to Sri Akal Takht Sahib but lacked courage to ask him admit the @INCIndia’s sin of demolishing Sikhs’ highest religio-temporal seat with tanks & mortars. What a contrast with demand for British apology for #JallianwalaBaghMassacre !” – tweeted Harsimrat in what the Chief Minister later described as an outrageous statement which showed neither an understanding of the events of 1984 nor his own role in the entire affair.

          Touching a raw nerve for the Badals, who have for decades conveniently brushed aside the shameful episode of their own ancestor hosting the butcher of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Captain Amarinder countered Harsimrat’s tweet with: “Did you, your husband @officeofssbadal or his father, Prakash Singh Badal, ever apologise for your great grandfather, Sardar Sunder Singh Majithia’s lavish dinner to Gen Dyer on the day of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre? He was later knighted in 1926 for his loyalty and his deeds.”

          The Chief Minister later went on to lash out at Harsimrat, her brother Bikram Singh Majithia and the Badal clan for playing the charade of nationalism to promote their vested political interests. The union minister’s remarks, he said, not only smacked of duplicity but total ignorance of the facts of his own role in the events following Operation Blue Star.

          “I resigned from both, the Parliament and my party, in protest against the military action. I was, and still am, fully aware of the implications and consequences of the events of those days,” he said, quipping that Harsimrat would have been in school at that time and totally clueless of what transpired then.

          “So don’t try to teach me on Akal Takht. No Badal can ever understand the pain of the Sikh community went through. They have been always too busy to self-serve their own interests. Had it been otherwise, they would have apologized for Harsimrat’s great grandfather’s anti-nation act long back,” said the Chief Minister.

          The Chief Minister’s retort to Harsimrat’s provocative tweet came even as other Congress leaders demanded an apology from Majithia and his sister for the dinner hosted by their great grandfather after the massacre in 1919.