Ex-IPS officer-turned-AAP MLA questions Mann govt amid growing dissidence in Punjab AAP
Chandigarh: On Thursday, the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Amritsar North MLA, former IPS officer Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh who has been critical of the Bhagwant Mann dispensation for its handling of the 2015 sacrilege cases, said in a Facebook post that he was “being humiliated on purpose” by the Mann government.
Attaching a video of the campaign for the 2022 assembly election, in which Mann is heard promising to deliver justice in the sacrilege cases, Singh wrote that he too believed in what Mann was saying but he “had become a victim of politics” and “Punjabis have been taken for a ride”.
Singh’s fresh outburst comes within days of his accusing the Mann government of “tapping” his and his supporters’ mobile phones for questioning its inaction in the sacrilege cases.
Singh is not the only one disillusioned with his party.
On Sunday, another AAP legislator representing Jalandhar West, Sheetal Angural, launched a scathing attack on a “senior AAP leader”, accusing him of trying to ruin his career. Although Angural refused to name the senior leader, his party colleagues, while speaking to ThePrint, see his attack in the context of his rivalry with the party’s MP from Jalandhar, Sushil Rinku.
In a Facebook Live, Angural listed out instances of his supporters and close aides being booked in what he claimed were false cases “at the behest of this senior leader”.
The MLA also announced that he had decided to launch a campaign against the AAP leader and wouldn’t rest till he was “exposed”.
These bushfires of infighting in Jalandhar and Amritsar have cast a shadow on the AAP’s preparation for the coming civic polls. Last week, the Punjab government notified elections to the five municipal corporations of Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Patiala and Phagwara, to be held in the first fortnight of November. Apart from the municipal polls, panchayat, block and zila parishad elections are also expected to take place in December. These elections are a crucial litmus test for the AAP ahead of the Lok Sabha elections next April.
When contacted, Singh told ThePrint that everything he wanted to say on the subject was already in the public domain and that he had nothing more to add. Rinku, too, declined to comment.
ThePrint has reached AAP’s chief spokesperson in Punjab, Malvinder Singh Kang, about Singh’s allegations via calls and Whatsapp messages. It has also reached Angural via calls and messages. This report will be updated if and when their responses are received.
The public voicing of disillusionment with their party by the two MLAs come a month after Congress leader and Leader of the Opposition Partap Singh Bajwa reportedly claimed that 32 AAP MLAs were “in touch with him” to switch their loyalties, and that his party was in a position to gain major victories in the parliamentary elections. But Mann dismissed this claim, saying Bajwa’s own brother Fateh Singh, who had joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2021, wasn’t in touch with him.
ਪ੍ਰਤਾਪ ਬਾਜਵਾ(ਭਾਜਪਾ) ਜੀ ਤੁਸੀਂ ਪੰਜਾਬ ਦੇ ਲੋਕਾਂ ਦੀ ਚੁਣੀ ਹੋਈ ਸਰਕਾਰ ਤੋੜਣ ਦੀ ਗੱਲ ਕਰ ਰਹੇ ਓ?? ਮੈਨੂੰ ਪਤਾ ਹੈ ਕਿ ਕਾਂਗਰਸ ਨੇ ਤੁਹਾਡੀ ਮੁੱਖ ਮੰਤਰੀ ਬਣਨ ਦੀ ਇੱਛਾ ਦੀ ਭਰੂਣ ਹੱਤਿਆ ਕਰ ਦਿੱਤੀ ਸੀ..ਮੈਂ ਪੰਜਾਬ ਦੇ 3 ਕਰੋੜ ਲੋਕਾਂ ਦਾ ਨੁਮਾਇੰਦਾ ਹਾਂ ਥੋਡੇ ਵਾਂਗ ਕੁਰਸੀ ਦਾ ਤਿਕੜਮਬਾਜ਼ ਨਹੀਂ..ਜੇ ਹਿੰਮਤ ਹੈ ਹਾਈ ਕਮਾਂਡ ਨਾਲ ਗੱਲ ਕਰੋ
— Bhagwant Mann (@BhagwantMann) September 26, 2023
It also comes as AAP revamps its organisational structure in the state in preparation for next month’s elections. On Saturday, the party dissolved its district-level units, removing all block and circle in-charges from their positions and paving the way for fresh faces. On Tuesday, it announced 14 “halka” or assembly segment heads as part of the overhaul.
Also Read: Punjab CM Mann under Opposition fire over silence on India-Canada row — ‘not a word from him’
Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh
Speaking Saturday at a public meeting at Sarawan village in Faridkot, Singh criticised the Mann government for dragging its feet over the 2015 cases of sacrilege towards the Guru Granth Sahib, which Sikhs consider to be a living Guru.
These cases involve the prosecution of multiple police officers and also Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal, who was then the deputy chief minister with the home portfolio.
Singh, a former IPS officer of the Punjab cadre, has been pursuing the sacrilege cases since they occurred under the Akali government in 2015. Ahead of the assembly elections last year Singh resigned from service to join AAP.
In his Facebook post Thursday, Singh said that when he resigned from the IPS in April 2021, he believed in what Mann had said at that time. “I became a victim of politics,” he wrote. Addressing the CM, Singh said, “Now the special investigative team (investigating the sacrilege cases) is yours and you are the home minister as well. The SIT is helping the witnesses turn hostile and benefiting the accused.”
“I am taking my own advocates to defend these cases, I am being humiliated knowingly. The accused have managed to overawe the government. Punjabis have been taken for a ride,” he added.
“The last judgement will be in the court of Guru Gobind Singh ji, (the 10th and last Guru of the Sikhs). My battle will continue and I am ready to suffer and pay any price for it,” added Singh.
During the public meeting at Sarawan, Singh said the people of Punjab are unlikely to get justice in the cases even under this government despite “their tall promises” during elections.
“I had no interest in politics but I was motivated by the AAP to join politics,” he said about his decision at the Sarawan meeting. “I was told that they would ensure that justice is meted out in the sacrilege cases. But now I have been left alone to fight these cases ever since this government came to power (last year). I’ve not been called for any discussion about these cases. I’ve had to hire my own advocates to fight these cases in the court”.
He went on to say that he was afraid the party would be “ruined” by the same group of police officers who had earlier previously “destroyed” the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Congress.
“In the budget session last year, I had asked to be allowed to speak for half an hour or even 10 mins,” he said. “After a few days, I came to know that my own government had tapped my phone and those of my supporters… I talked to the DGP …and an SP (Intelligence) was transferred and the matter ended. Whenever I raise this issue, even in my government, I’m harassed but I’m not bothered … I’m ready for anything.”
He was also critical of the Mann government’s choice of its new advocate general (AG). Earlier this month, the government appointed Gurminder Singh, who had reportedly represented suspended Inspector-General Paramraj Umranangal in a petition related to the 2015 Behbal Kalan police firing case, as the new AG.
“How will the new AG defend these cases in the court when he has been on the side of the accused?” the former IPS officer asked.
This isn’t the first time Singh has been critical of the Mann government.
Last month, he had slammed the government over the inauguration of the first ‘School of Eminence’ in Amritsar, saying it wasn’t a new school but an old one that was already doing very well.
Also read: Mann’s political transformation in AAP: From ‘in-house entertainer’ to a virtual number 2
Angural vs Rinku
In his Facebook Live post, Angural claimed “the senior AAP leader” has had “extreme” power for the past five months and has been using it not only to settle political scores but also to target him personally.
“I’m issuing a warning through Facebook that this is the beginning of my battle against someone who I helped despite the fact that even my family was against him…the Aam Aadmi Party gave him such a big position to hold and yet he is trying to finish the party..he is trying to damage and malign party workers,” Angural said in the post.
Angural and Rinku are widely known to have been political adversaries, having fought the 2022 assembly elections against each other — the former as an AAP candidate and the latter on a Congress ticket. Although he lost the election, Rinku was inducted into the Congress in April, just ahead of the Jalandhar parliamentary bypoll.
Although the AAP claimed at the time that the two leaders had “buried the hatchet”, their supporters clashed violently on the day Rinku filed his nomination papers. He finally won the election with a margin of 58,691 votes.
According to AAP sources, Angural’s outburst came in the wake of the Jalandhar police’s arrest of his close associate, Mukesh Sethi.
Sethi, whom Angural was pitching as a mayoral candidate, was arrested from a hotel in Mumbai on charges of attempt to murder, kidnapping, and assault on a businessman on 13 October. The arrest was in a joint operation between Jalandhar and Mumbai police.
In the Facebook Live, the Jalandhar West MLA has blamed Sethi’s arrest on the “senior AAP leader”, who he claims had connections with gangsters and was promoting gang culture in Jalandhar.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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