Chandigarh, March 19
Punjab Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh has said that he would not step down from the post till he was asked to do so by party president Sonia Gandhi.

“I am the party head and will remain there till the party high command wants,” he said. He told his detractors in the party that they should not waste their time picking on him as “he was there to stay”.

Announcing the launch of a “morale booster” campaign for the party workers, Amarinder Singh said the outcome of the Punjab elections had been discussed with the Congress high command and the central leadership was fully aware of the circumstances that resulted in the party debacle. “The day Sonia ji wants me to step down, I will, but no party leader has the right to make statements before the media. We are taking indiscipline very seriously,” he said.

Advising his party leaders to come to him or go to the party’s central high command with their grievance instead of venting these before the media, Amarinder Singh said there was no time to waste ahead of the corporation elections, which would be followed by the panchayat samiti and zila parishad elections and finally the parliamentary poll in 2014.

He announced that he would tour every district of the state to ensure that the Congress workers were not demoralised by the vendetta let loose once again by the SAD-BJP government on the Congress workers. He said the government had started targeting and victimising Congress workers. He would forward details of such cases to Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, as desired by him in a letter (written to Capt Amarinder), to see what action he really would take, he added.

Sharing the dais with newly appointed Congress Legislative Party Leader (CLP) Sunil Jakhar and outgoing CLP leader Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, Amarinder spelt reasons for the Congress defeat.

He said the SAD-BJP alliance used money to support Congress rebels, making the party loose at least 10 seats. The BSP did extremely well in Doaba, thus hitting the Congress. He said even the atta-dal scheme funded by the Centre had helped the SAD-BJP alliance.

Maintaining that the government had again stooped to its old tactics of victimising and harassing Congress workers, he said even the security cover of former minister Gurchet Singh Bhullar, who contested elections from Khemkaran had been arbitrarily withdrawn as also that provided to his son and Punjab Youth Congress vice-president Sukhpal Bhullar. This had been done despite high court orders and an affidavit filed by the SSP that Bhullar was being provided security, he added.

Amarinder disagreed that due efforts were not made to prevail upon party rebels to withdraw from the contest. Despite the limited time available, 60 out of the 81 rebels who had filed nomination papers were made to withdraw and only 21 were left in the fray, he claimed. By the time the Congress leadership could reach out to them, they had been already paid huge money by the Shiromani Akali Dal to ensure that they stayed in the contest, he added. He said the Congress vote share in the state was intact. In fact, the vote share of the Akali-BJP alliance had gone down by 4 per cent while that of the Congress by less than 1 per cent, he said.

“Although the alliance won 12 seats more than the Congress, their total vote share is only 0.8 per cent more than us,” he said. The People’s Party of Punjab took away more votes from the Akalis than the Congress, he claimed.