Chandigarh: Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) leader and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Punjab CM Amarinder Singh was a ‘free soldier’. Delivering a ‘victory speech’ after the BJP and its allies won 45 seats in Tripura assembly elections, results for which were declared yesterday, Modi stated that Congress Chief Ministers are becoming rare.
Indian PM Narendra Modi [File Photo]
Speaking about Punjab CM Amarinder Singh, he said: “In Punjab, the Congress does not even consider their CM as their own. He marches on, like an independent solider.”
Punjab CM Amarinder Singh [File Photo]
Amarinder Singh was quick to react to Narendra Modi’s remarks. In a written statement issued soon after Modi’s speech, Amarinder Singh dismissed Narendra Modi’s remarks ‘as part of the BJP’s futile attempts to create a wedge between him and the Congress high command through frivolous and unsubstantiated statements ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections’.
Questioning the source of Modi’s `information’, Captain Amarinder quipped, “I don’t remember complaining to him against the Congress high command. Did the high command go and complain to him against me?’
“One really fails to understand what prompted Mr. Modi’s ill-conceived and unfounded remark,” said Captain Amarinder, asserting that neither he nor the Congress high command needed the Indian Prime Minister’s advice on how to manage their internal relations.
“I know my business and I know how to run my state and manage my relationship with my party high command, which is more than one can say about the BJP leaders,” said the Chief Minister, adding that the Congress high command had full faith in his leadership and had given him a free hand to bring Punjab out of the mess into which the BJP, in alliance with SAD, had plunged the state.
He also said that Narendra Modi’s `jumlebaazi’ would not have any impact on either the Congress leadership and workers, or the citizens of the country.