M A I N   N E W S

Badal ‘gifts properties’ to Amarinder
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 6
The Punjab Chief Minister, Mr Parkash Singh Badal, today extended the open offer to the President of the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC), Capt Amarinder Singh, to take, not in exchange, but as a free gift all “imaginary” properties such as farms in Jodhpur, Perth, California, a multistoreyed building in Manhattan, parking lots and nightclubs in New York, a house in Sector 5, Chandigarh, Faridkot House in New Delhi and Swiss bank accounts listed in the letter.

Responding to Capt Amarinder Singh’s letter dated September 4, Mr Badal today wrote a three page missive to the PPCC President.

Describing Capt Amarinder Singh’s letter as “a sick political gimmick” and an attempt at character assassination by using patented falsehood, Mr Badal reminded him that the days of “monarchical tyranny are over when the nobility dictated dumb people, shackled by compulsions. In the present age of enlightened democracy, your verbal diarrhoea will not cut any ice with the people of Punjab and in another few months, you will simply sit back and lick your political wounds”.

Claiming that he had never used mudslinging as “a populist tool”, Mr Badal stated that he always believed in taking political issues to the electoral arena.

“Whatever I have is my possession out of the hard, honest labour of my ancestors and absolutely transparent, fully accounted for vocational ventures of various members of my larger family. The allegations such as my having properties in Australia, the USA, Switzerland, Delhi and Jodhpur are stinking fulminations of someone who is as green as grass and just a political stick in the mud”, said Mr Badal in the letter.

“You may have inadvertently included your own properties in the list sent to me”, Mr Badal’s letter further added. Mr Badal offered to Capt Amarinder Singh to take “imaginary” properties such as a 10,000-acre farm in Perth, a 8000-acre farm in California, a multistoreyed building in Manhattan, parking lots and nightclubs in New York 5000 acres in Jodhpur, a house in Sector 5 in Chandigarh, Faridkot House in Chanakyapuri (New Delhi) and Swiss bank accounts as a totally free gift from him (Mr Badal).

Mr Badal told the PPCC chief that even he (Capt Amarinder Singh) did not have the exact account of his ancestral properties. “Not only most of the contents of your letter are purely imaginary, but you also appear to have a fantastic gift of the gab in exaggerating the facts even relating to my ancestral properties while posing to keep an account of the earnings of my family during the past five years”, Mr Badal continued in his letter.

Mr Badal stopped short of making a attack on the personal life of Capt Amarinder Singh though a passing reference was made in the letter.

Informed sources said that Mr Badal’s letter had reached Capt Amarinder Singh, who was in Delhi. The PPCC chief was working on another letter which would be released here on September 8 on return from Delhi, the sources added.