AMN / Chandigarh
Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Saturday reacted sharply to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s veiled remarks for him that he was a “free soldier who didn’t consider the Congress party its own and whom the Congress did not consider its own”.
Questioning the source of Mr Modi’s `information’, Capt 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,” he said asserting that neither he nor the Congress high command needed the 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.
As a loyal soldier of his party, which has a deep-rooted connect with the people across every state, Capt said he was leading the party in Punjab in a truly democratic manner, as becoming of a party of the stature of the Indian National Congress, and as guided by the party high command.
The PM while referring to Congress electoral decimation in his speech today mentioned Punjab in passing and in a veiled reference to CM Amarinder Singh whom he did not name, the PM said, “The leader in Punjab don’t consider the Congress his own nor does the Congress consider him its own. He (read Capt Amarinder Singh) is a swatantra fauji (free soldier).”