JALANDHAR: Three days before Punjab goes to polls on February 20, the narrative has taken a quick turn, bearing a striking similarity with the 2017 elections. It’s about peace and communal harmony in the state, and there is an implicit as well as explicit focus on creating a perception of fear among Hindus.
In 2017, AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal’s stay at a Sikh NRI’s house just weeks before polls and the Maur blast just four days before the polls were the centre of focus. On Wednesday, former AAP leader Kumar Vishwas alleged Kejriwal was hobnobbing with ‘Sikh radicals’. He alleged that the AAP national convener wanted to be either chief minister of Punjab or the PM of an independent country. However, the AAP has reacted strongly and rubbished the claims as “defamatory, malicious, unfounded, fabricated and inflammatory”. It also questioned why Vishwas, who was once its significant leader, had been silent on this till now.
BJP and Congress have already launched an all out offensive against the AAP supremo. Incidentally, on Tuesday, Kejriwal had talked about a sense of insecurity and apprehensions shared by a Hindu businessman with him after acrimony between Congress and BJP following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit. He also said that their government would ensure security of all across religions and identities. But a narrative around Hindus has already been on. AAP leader Raghav Chadha has been strongly attacking Congress for denying the post of CM to Sunil Jakhar for just being Hindu, which hurt the community.
A few weeks before the 2017 polls, SAD-BJP and Congress made an issue of Kejriwal’s stay at a Sikh NRI’s house in Moga, alleging the owner was an ex-militant who was booked in connection with a blast at Baghapurana in September 1997. Even though house owner Gurnider Singh Ghali was acquitted by a court, they still accused the Delhi CM and his party of hobnobbing with Sikh ‘radicals’. Ghali later said that he had been falsely implicated in the case and even challenged then deputy CM and home minister Sukhbir Badal to show any FIR against him, other than the case in which was acquitted.
On January 31, 2017, just four days before the elections, a huge blast had occurred near the venue of Congress candidate Harminder Jassi’s rally at Maur Mandi. Though Jassi, a close relative of Sirsa dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim, escaped unhurt, seven persons had died in the incident. Sukhbir had explicitly pinned the blame on AAP and Sikh radicals, while referring to hobnobbing between the two.
The blast had created fear in Punjab. It apparently pushed the Hindu voters away from AAP, and they had largely voted for Congress and BJP. Congress, SAD and BJP kept on raising the Maur blast issue for around a year, but they turned silent after it was traced to the Sirsa dera in 2018 and it was found that the car used in the blast was painted in a workshop in the dera. They are still silent on the issue, including AAP, which bore its political brunt, even though there is a lot of focus on internal security and peace.
On October 21, 2021, deputy CM Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, who also holds the home department, had even alleged that investigation in Maur blast was hushed up during former CM Amarinder Singh’s tenure despite being asked several times to speed up the inquiry. Amarinder has not responded to this yet.
