WEB DESK
Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh has termed the opening of the Kartarpur Corridor a “bigger conspiracy” hatched by the Pakistan Army, saying Pakistan’s Army General Qamar Javed Bajwa had broken the news to Navjot Singh Sidhu even before Imran Khan was sworn in as their prime minister.
“The opening of the Kartarpur Corridor is clearly a game plan of the ISI,” Singh Chief Minister in an interview to a TV channel, adding a bigger conspiracy seems to have been hatched by Pakistan Army against India. He admitted that Pakistan was attempting to revive militancy in Punjab and thus everyone should be wary of all of its overtures, no matter how grand they appear to be, an official release, quoting him, said here.
The Sidhu affair was being unnecessarily hyped and those raising it had clearly failed to see the ISI gameplan, said Amarinder, lashing out at the Akalis for branding the Punjab minister as “stooge” of the Pakistan Prime Minister.
The Chief Minister dismissed it as nothing more than a credit war, lambasting the Akalis and the BJP central leadership for indulging in unwarranted controversy over his (Chief Minister’s) relations with Sidhu in a bid to divert public attention from the core issue of Pakistan’s continued and deliberate perpetration of terror activities in Punjab with the ultimate aim of destabilising the border state.
Captain Amarinder said the demand for opening of the Kartarpur Sahib corridor was pending since partition as several holy Sikh shrines – Sri Nankana Sahib, Sri Panja Sahib, Dera Sahib and Kartarpur Sahib – had been left in Pakistan.
Even former Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Manmohan Singh had taken up the issue of opening the Kartarpur corridor with Pakistan. He said he himself had raised this issue with his Pakistan Punjab counterpart Parvez Elahi and with the then President, Parvez Musharraf during his previous tenure as the chief minister.
The Chief Minister said Imran Khan was undoubtedly making efforts to bring peace, tranquillity and harmony with India, but at the same time he should also prevail upon the top brass of Pakistani Army to ensure that killings of our soldiers at borders are stopped immediately. Pakistan’s history reveals that if any Prime Minister wants to stay in power, he has to toe the line of the Army, said the Chief Minister, citing the example of Nawaz Sharif’s agreement with the Pakistani Army in Dubai, which led to his continuation as Prime Minister.
Asked on why he opted not to go to Pakistan for the ground-breaking ceremony of the Kartarpur Sahib corridor, Captain Amarinder said he declined the invite because he could not think of going there while Indian soldiers and civilians were being killed by Pakistani Army.
On the issue of Navjot Sidhu’s visit to Pakistan for the ground-breaking ceremony, Amarinder said he had told Sidhu that he had declined the invite by writing a letter to the Pak Minister for foreign affairs, and had also shared a copy of the same on the social media. Despite his advice not to visit Pakistan, Sidhu, however, went ahead due to his friendship with Imran Khan, said the Chief Minister, adding that this was not unreasonable. He said he himself has many friends there, including the former Pakistan Punjab Chief Minister Parvez Elahi.
“We had been meeting frequently during my previous tenure and Elahi had also been coming to meet me in Patiala”, said Amarinder.
The Chief Minister said that Navjot Sidhu was a “likeable person” and he shared warm ties with even Sidhu’s parents when the cricketer-turned-minister’s father was president of District Congress unit Patiala and his (Captain’s) mother Mohinder Kaur was the Member Parliament from Patiala.
The Chief Minister said that he and Sidhu were not at loggerheads as reported by the media and he had absolutely no problems with Sidhu while running the government. Captain Amarinder Singh said that Sidhu always spoke in a forthright manner and his only problem was that “sometimes he shoots before he thinks.”
Responding to another question regarding Sidhu’s remarks that Rahul Gandhi was his Captain, the Chief Minister said that this was hardly any issue to be raised as Sidhu had always treated him (Captain) as a fatherly figure.
In response to a question, Captain Amarinder warned Pakistan against carrying on with its nefarious designs and urged it to desist from trying to foment trouble in Punjab. He also asked Pakistan to put an immediate end to the killing of Indian soldiers at the borders.
Pakistan Army General Qamar Javed Bajwa should understand that Punjab Police was fully geared up to take Pakistan head-on if it continued to the vitiate peaceful atmosphere of the state through terror, said Amarinder.
Amarinder pointed to the recent successes of the Punjab Police, including the arrest of two culprits, within days, for the grenade attack at the Nirankari Bhawan in Adliwal village of Amritsar district in connivance with ISI agents.