After the CBI registered an offence against Delhi’s deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, the Punjab Congress has now launched an attack on the Bhagwant Mann government seeking a probe into Punjab’s excise policy alleging that it had been ‘manipulated’ on the lines of Delhi.
A battery of senior party leaders lead by state Congress president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring and the Leader of the Opposition, Partap Singh Bajwa along with former ministers launched an all out attack on the recently introduced policy adding they will be meeting the governor seeking probe into the liquor policy.
“Like Delhi the liquor policy even in Punjab it is a sell-out in which the AAP leaders in connivance with some senior officials have defrauded the state by thousands of crores of rupees, besides rendering hundreds of Punjabi traders jobless,” alleged Warring.
The Congress leaders alleged that the AAP government had favoured “outside” liquor mafia while dishing out its excise policy. “There is a definite scam in it and like the Delhi policy it was aimed at benefiting just a few big time dealers,” alleged Bajwa.
The AAP government has trashed the allegations by the Congress. Party spokesman said since Mann government had taken stern action against corrupt practices of the earlier Congress regime, the party was raising such baseless allegations.
The Congress, meanwhile, also upped the ante against the vigilance cases being registered against their party leaders. Working president of the party and former minister Bharat Bhushan Ashu, who was the minister of food, civil supplies and consumer affairs in the previous Congress government, has been accused of corruption in awarding tenders for transportation of food grains.
Threatening to take the AAP government head on and terming their actions as vendetta politics the Punjab Congress as also announced that the entire state leadership will present itself before the vigilance bureau on Monday in protest.
With inputs from News18