Red carpet for Canadian PM in Punjab
CHANDIGARH: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will hold a meeting in Amritsar on February 21, officials said on Monday ending long-standing uncertainty.
Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh is all set to take Punjab’s close business as well as people-to-people relations with Canada to the next level, with a one-to-one meeting with visiting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Amritsar on Wednesday, said an official spokesperson here.
“Look forward to meeting Canadian Prime Minister @Justintrudeau in Amritsar on Wednesday. I’m hopeful that this meeting will help strengthen the close Indocanadian business ties as well as the deep-rooted people-topeople relations between our two countries,” the chief minister tweeted.
The development came after there was an uncertainty over whether the Canadian premier would hold a meeting with Amarinder Singh during his short visit to Amritsar on February 21.
Officials said the chief minister would hold a meeting with the Canadian prime minister at a hotel in Amritsar after Trudeau pays obeisance at the Golden Temple.
Significantly, Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh had refused to meet Canadian Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan during the latter’s visit to Punjab last year. Amarinder Singh had even accused Sajjan of being a “Khalistani sympathiser”.
In 2016, when Amarinder Singh was the Punjab Congress chief, he had written a strongly-worded letter to the Canadian prime minister, lodging a protest on being denied permission for interaction with Punjabi NRIS in Canada in the run-up to the Punjab Assembly polls.
Amarinder Singh had called it a “gag order”.
Meanwhile, Amarinder Singh has now directed the state administration to roll out the red carpet for the visiting dignitary.
While trade and business will be the key focus areas at the meeting, the two leaders are also expected to discuss steps to intensify the close relations between the people of the two countries, according to a spokesperson of the chief minister’s office (CMO).
“Punjab has deep roots with Canada, where a large Punjabi community is settled, and has always striven to strengthen the connect,” said Amarinder Singh.
He also referred to Trudeau’s apology, two years ago, in the Canadian parliament over the 1914 Komagata Maru incident, in which hundreds of Sikh, Muslim and Hindu passengers in a ship were denied entry in to Canada and forced to return to India, where they met a violent fate. JAMMU: An attack by Pakistan’s notorious Border Action Team (BAT) was repulsed by the Army which killed a heavily-armed terrorist and grievously injured two others along the Line of Control (LOC) in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district, a senior official said today.
Three soldiers were also injured in the gunfight, an official said. The BAT team, comprising Pakistani regulars and terrorists, tried to sneak in from across the LOC in Gulpur area of Khari Karmaraâ sector last evening under cover of heavy shelling but the alert troops foiled their nefarious designs, Jammu-based Army PRO Lt Col Devender Anand said.
A huge quantity of arms and ammunition along with a Pakistani flag was recovered from the slain terrorist whose body was recovered during the search and sanitisation operation, he said. “We will be offering to hand over the body of the armed intruder to the Pakistan Army,” the official added. Three soldiers were injured in the gunbattle and were evacuated to military hospital for specialized treatment, said an official, who did not want to be named. Sharing details of the incident, Lt Col Anand said yesterday evening at about 1715 hours, the Pakistan Army initiated unprovoked and indiscriminate firing from small arms, automatics and mortars engaging the troops deployed at forward posts on the LOC. â€oeour troops responded with retaliatory fire in equal measure. The alert troops noticed some movement and immediately engaged the group with effective fire and there was immediate retaliation from the armed intruders, the Army PRO said. The covering fire from Pakistan Army posts, meanwhile, continued unabated, he added. In the firefight, an armed intruder was killed and at least two others sustained grievous injuries and were seen retreating towards a Pakistani post, the official said.