AMRITSAR SAHIB—Parkash Badal loves BJP, the Hindutavi and anti-Sikh party, so much so that to woo later, he does not even hesitate to humiliate his own appointed president of Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), the supreme Sikh body in the world. The best instance of this was materialized in his interaction with media persons held here on Friday. Herein Badal called SGPC president Avtar Singh Makkar “liar”, lashing out at latter’s statement about the construction of memorial of martyrs of June 1984 holocaust namely “Yadgar Shaheedan” including Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.
Actually, Makkar had stated previous day that decision of building the June 84 memorial in Darbar Sahib Complex was taken with the consent of Badal as SGPC is under control of Akali Dal. Making such statement, Makkar tried to woo the party supremo, but he did not know that instead of that he might be humiliated by him in this way in public. Reacting harshly to the statement, Badal said in joint conference with BJP state leaders, that Makkar is lying and the matter was never discussed with him before taking the decision.
Badal said he has never interfered in the functioning of the SGPC which is an autonomous body. When he was asked to clarify whether SGPC president came out of his “Lifafa” (envelope), he said, “My interference limits upto sending “Lifafa”. After that when president assumes the charge, all decision are taken by him.”
It is worth mentioning that Badal repeated the words two or three times that Makkar’s statement was “a core lie”.
Interestingly, soon after making the statement, Badal said it would be better if the media did not report it that way. “Please don’t write that I have called SGPC President a liar. It will not sound good. After all, he is head of the SGPC ,” he said.
Badal was here to motivate SAD-BJP workers to participate in a rally to be addressed by BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi at Jagraon on February 23. BJP’s state president Kamal Sharma, former minister Manoranjan Kalia and Chief Parliamentary Secretary KD Bhandari accompanied Badal.
Reacting to the statement of former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh about Badal’s alignment with the Centre on Operation Bluestar, he said, “Nobody can be a bigger liar than Amarinder. I have seen that you people rely more on his statements.”
About the Congress leader’s statement that Badal had spent only 40 months in jail and not 17 years as he had been claiming, he said, “Elections are around the corner and the Congress is resorting to all such measures just to spoil the atmosphere. I spent 19 months behind bars at the time of Emergency alone.”
