Punjab: SAD leader Bikram Majithia alleges conspiracy behind PM security breach

Chandigarh, January 11

Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader Bikram Singh Majithia on Tuesday said the recent breach in the prime minister’s security in Punjab was a conspiracy hatched by the Charanjit Singh Channi government to embarrass the BJP.

He also accused the chief minister of trying to downplay the issue of security breach and refusing to own responsibility for the same, and said “earlier also we have witnessed how the persons who had come to garland former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi assassinated him”.

Majithia, whose party Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) is an erstwhile ally of the BJP, made the remarks while speaking to reporters after he was granted anticipatory bail in a Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act case registered against him.

On the issue of a security lapse during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Ferozepur, he said that the security of the prime minister was compromised.

When the chief minister or the Punjab Congress chief travel, their roads are not blocked but their route diversion plans are ready, Majithia said.

He questioned why the state government failed to find an alternative route for the prime minister.

The prime minister’s convoy was stranded on a flyover due to a blockade by protesters in Ferozepur last week after which he returned from the poll-bound state without attending any event, including a rally.

“It was well planned to embarrass the BJP and the entire system and who was hatching this conspiracy, it was (the then DGP Siddharth) Chattopadhyaya, Channi, (Deputy Chief Minister) Sukhjinder Randhawa and (state Congress chief) Navjot Singh Sidhu,” Majithia alleged.

Asked if there was a conspiracy behind what happened with the prime minister during his visit, he said, “100 per cent”.                

Majithia said he has never heard of the chief minister or the Punjab Congress chief stranded on any road for 15-20 minutes.

It never happened in the past that a prime minister remained stranded for 15-20 minutes, he said while suggesting that in such a situation anything could have happened.

“It was a well-planned conspiracy hatched at the Chief Minister’s house by PPCC president, Sukhjinder Randhawa, and this DGP,” he alleged.

He also cited the Rajiv Gandhi assassination. “What has happened in the past, those who went to garland Rajiv Gandhi assassinated him,” the SAD leader said.

Channi is speaking nonsense that he would have spilled his own blood and taken the first bullet had there been the slightest threat to the prime minister’s security, Majithia said.

He added that had there been any untoward incident regarding the prime minister’s security, what face would they have had.

The Supreme Court on Monday had said it would set up a panel headed by its former judge to probe the security breach during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Punjab and stayed the parallel inquiries by committees of the Centre and the state government into the lapses. — PTI