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Sukhbir, Bhattal moving polity into
perverse grooves
with their hordes
WSN Bureau
Jalandhar:
Politics in
Punjab is taking
strange turns towards the perverse rather than the reformist. Recent
local body elections witnessed an induction of unprecedented
violence at grass roots level but queer is the response from the
Opposition which has legitimate reasons for a grouse. The Congress'
state unit led by Rajinder Kaur Bhattal has now suggested formation
of self-protection groups at the state and district level which will
be basically hordes of young men armed with lathis and sharp-edged
weapons to set right those who try to brow beat.
Bhattal's
proposal is almost a re-production of the thought process that went
behind formation of the Student Organisation of India, a youth body
patronised by Sukhbir Singh Badal, a fact that Bhattal herself felt
no shame in conceding while announcing her move.
The draft
proposal has been forwarded to the All India Congress Committee for
approval. Bhattal said the groups were proposed in response to the
mass-scale rigging by the SOI in the recently concluded panchayat
and municipal elections.
"The groups, if
they come about, would strengthen the party at the grass root level
and work towards restoring democracy in the state," she said.
Former CM
Amarinder Singh has of course slammed the proposal but that
opposition emerges not from any conviction that it is bad politics
but because of his antipathy towards Bhattal.
In fact, so
perverse are the grooves into which politics is sliding that Bhattal
even promised facilities on a par with those being given to freedom
fighters and terror victims in the state to victim families who had
taken a stand in the interest of the party. Of course that will come
about when the Congress returns to power.
9
July, 2008
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