It took Amarinder over five hours to reach the Golden Temple from the airport as hundreds of partymen thronged the lanes of the city to show their support to the Congress leader.
An overwhelming show of strength is what Amritsar witnessed when former chief minister Amarinder Singh went to pay obeisance at the Golden Temple.
Barring Punjab Pradesh Congress president Mohinder Singh Kaypee and Congress Legislature Party leader Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, all prominent state Congress leaders were present to welcome the former chief minister.
It took Amarinder over five hours to reach the Golden Temple from the airport as hundreds of partymen thronged the lanes of the city to show their support to the Congress leader, whose disqualification from the state assembly was withdrawn by the Supreme Court (SC).
Amarinder hailed SC’s verdict which ruled that the Parkash Singh Badal government had adopted an “unconstitutional” resolution in the House to expel him for an executive decision taken during the last assembly session.
The apex court’s verdict was a slap on the face of chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, who had manoeuvered his ouster from the assembly, he said, adding that, Badal’s political vengeance was exposed.
He also said he would play a constructive role in the assembly now that his stance had been vindicated.
Amarinder was suspended from the assembly for the rest of his term after findings of a House committee led by Harish Dhanda had castigated him and two of his former cabinet colleagues, Chaudhary Jagjit Singh and Raghunath Sahai Puri, for “indulging in rampant corruption to exempt 32 acres of prime land in Amritsar from the improvement trust area”.
Dhanda had said the three ministers had flouted all official norms and rules in 2005 to favour a coloniser in Amritsar by offering him prime land in the city.
“Such was the desperation of Amarinder and others to help the colonisers that the then chief minister immediately removed the improvement trust chairperson for raising objections to the deal,” Dhanda said.
The deal caused the Amritsar Improvement Trust a loss of over Rs60 crore and a piece of land worth Rs300 crore was rendered useless.
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