PUNJAB CONGRESS

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The meeting was attended by technical education and industrial training minister Charanjit Singh Channi, revenue minister Sukhbinder Sarkaria, Punjab Congress general secretary (organisation) Pargat Singh and around two dozen legislators.

The disgruntled leaders also authorised a five-member delegation --— four cabinet ministers and Pargat Singh, all known detractors of Singh — to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi and apprise her of their sentiment at the earliest.

Sidhu was not present at the meeting but the leaders said they will discuss the matter with him before leaving for Delhi. The Congress has 80 MLAS in Punjab.

Channi told reporters that the MLAS who assembled in Chandigarh were worried about unfulfilled poll promises made by the Congress before the 2017 assembly elections. “A lot of promises have been fulfilled, but those promises (the implementation of) which may lead to friction with the opposition remain unfulfilled,” he said.

He said that issues were not getting resolved the way the Congress wanted. “We no longer trust that these issues will be resolved. Therefore, we are seeking time from the party high command for a meeting, and we will meet them and put forth our issues so that Punjab’s issues can be resolved,” said Channi, flanked by Randhawa, Bajwa and Pargat Singh.

Hours later, Singh and his loyalists hit back, demanding action against two newly appointed advisors of Sidhu , Malvinder Singh Mali and Pyare Lal Garg, who stirred a row on Sunday with their controversial comments on Kashmir.

Five cabinet ministers and one MLA close to Singh called for strong action against Mali and Garg for their “patently anti-national and pro-pak comments”.

“The statements of both these newly appointed advisers of Punjab Congress president Navjot Sidhu were clearly against India’s interests, and detrimental to national security,” said cabinet ministers Brahm Mohindra, Vijay Inder

Singla, Bharat Bhushan Ashu, Balbir Singh Sidhu and Sadhu Singh Dharamsot, along with MLA Raj Kumar Verka in a statement.

In a Facebook post last week, Mali had said Kashmir was a “country of Kashmiri people” and called both India and Pakistan its illegal occupiers. In a separate post, he put a sketch of late prime minister Indira Gandhi standing near a heap of human skulls with a gun in her hand. Garg had criticised Singh for attacking Pakistan over Kashmir.

The comments immediately sparked a controversy with Singh calling them “atrocious” and “anti national” and Congress MP Manish Tewari condemning the leaders.

Besides stringent legal action against Mali and Garg, the five ministers also urged the Congress national leadership to direct Sidhu to immediately rein in his aides in the interest of the party and the country.

“The Congress has made many sacrifices for the protection of the nation’s security and peace, as have our soldiers at the borders. Nobody can or should be allowed to undermine these sacrifices and jeopardise the safety of our country and its people,” they emphasised, citing, in particular, the grave implications such statements could have for the border state of Punjab.

The Congress leaders questioned Sidhu’s failure to put his foot down on such “anti-national and pro-pak diatribe” by his aides, warning that this could damage the Congress in the 2022 elections.

They termed Mali’s statement on Kashmir a dangerous and unacceptable deviation from India’s stated position on J&K. Garg’s statement countering Singh’s criticism of Pakistan reflected his pro-pak leanings, they said. “Drones from Pakistan are dumping arms and drugs into Punjab almost every day. Our soldiers are dying at the border. How can any patriotic Indian not condemn Pak actions in the circumstances?” they asked.

Tuesday’s bitter verbal war is a throwback to a crisis that engulfed the Congress in May, when Sidhu rallied Singh’s detractors and publicly accused the CM of enabling corruption. Tensions between 79-year-old Singh and Sidhu had simmered since the latter quit the state cabinet after the chief minister changed his portfolio in 2019.

To resolve the crisis, the Congress set up a three-member panel, which met around 150 functionaries – including Singh twice — and submitted its report to party chief Sonia Gandhi on June 10.

On July 18, Sidhu was named state unit chief — a post he coveted — overriding strong objections from Singh. The two leaders were seen at key meetings together and the CM even attended the ceremony where Sidhu took charge of the party in Punjab. But the latest round of infighting shatters that fragile truce.

THE LEADERS ALSO AUTHORISED A FIVE-MEMBER DELEGATION TO MEET SONIA GANDHI IN DELHI

According to a study “The environmental impacts of palm oil in context” by several biodiversity experts published in Nature Plants last year, between 2008 and 2017, oil palm expanded globally at an estimated rate of 700000 million hectares a year; palm oil is the leading and cheapest edible oil in much of Asia and Africa. Oil palm expansion’s direct contribution to regional tropical deforestation varies widely, ranging from an estimated 3% in West Africa to 50% in Malaysian Borneo. Species threatened by oil palm plantations made up 3.5% of the taxa and 1.2% of all globally threatened taxa (27,159 species) in 2019 including orangutans, gibbons and the tiger. The clearance of forests and drainage of peatlands for oil palm emit substantial carbon dioxide also.

“Entire lowland forest, except for Taman Negara NP, in Peninsular Malaysia are lost to oil palm plantations. They are one of the biggest drivers of loss of biodiversity in Sumatra. We should not simply ape the Malaysian or Indonesian model of oil palm plantations. No natural forests, whether it’s a protected area or not, should be replaced with oil palm plantations. If done in an unplanned manner, this will have disastrous consequences on India’s biodiversity,” said Bivash Pandav, director of Bombay Natural History Society.

The Union environment ministry is also focusing on facilitating plantations outside forest areas. The ministry invited an expression of interest (EOI) to prepare a draft amendment to the Indian Forest Act 1927. One of the key areas of amendment will be to encourage forest sector economic growth in the country -- especially getting non-government actors/ private sector/ civil society/ individuals to take up afforestation/tree planting and/or to develop/manage private forests on non-forest lands on their own.

A forest policy has also been in the works which will support plantations and agroforestry in non-forest areas by government and private bodies. “The draft forest policy is being internally circulated for comments. It will be shared for public comments once approved,” said a senior official from forest policy division of the environment ministry who asked not to be named.