What do you know of the grace of the national flag, Amarinder asks BJP’s Chugh

Chandigarh, January 30

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh called Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Tarun Chugh’s remarks on his Army background “reprehensible”.

“What does the BJP or its leadership know of Army honour or the grace of the national flag, in which the bodies of our Punjabi brothers come wrapped from the borders every second day,” a press release quoted him as saying.

“We in Punjab know the pain of seeing the bodies of our sons and brothers, wrapped in the national flag, come home every second day,” he said, adding that the BJP clearly has no empathy or sensitivity towards the soldiers losing their lives to protect India’s honour and integrity.

Neither Chugh nor his party could relate to the anguish of those very soldiers on seeing their farmer fathers and brothers being beaten up and tear-gassed while fighting for their rights, said the Chief Minister.

The Chief Minister slammed Chugh for deliberately spreading lies on an issue relating to the honour of Indian soldiers fighting for the safety and security of the nation at the borders. Lambasting the BJP national general secretary over his remarks on the ‘Republic Day grace’, he said the BJP, which had systematically ripped the Constitutional fabric apart over the past 6 years and most notably over the draconian Farm Laws, had lost all moral and ethical right to talk of the honour of the R-day.

“What was wrong in my statement that ‘maligning the farmers’ (for the Red Fort violence) could cause the morale of the armed forces, 20 per centof which is from Punjab, to go down? How does that amount to insulting the Republic Day grace and my own Army background?” asked an angry Amarinder, hitting out at Chugh for misleading the people with baseless allegations.

“What happened to the grace of the R-day when the central government, which the BJP leads, trampled over the federal and Constitutional rights of the states to unilaterally bring in the Farm Ordinances without consulting anyone? Where is the grace in letting the poor farmers, who are feeding you along with the billion plus people of India every day, shiver out in the cold on the roads, with many of them dying out there?”