Will raise drug abuse issue in Parliament: Bhagwant Mann
JALANDHAR: Paying tributes to Shaheed Bhagat Singh, newly elected Sangrur member of Parliament and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Bhagwant Mann on Saturday claimed that revolution had come yet in Punjab and he would work for making the state as dreamt by the martyr.
With his family at Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh Memorial Complex in Nawanshahr, a moist-eyed Mann said he would raise the issue of drug abuse in Parliament citing facts and figures and would wear yellow turban during the session proceedings so that leaders who had forgotten the martyr should remember him.
Mann also put his winning certificate on the feet of the statue of Bhagat Singh and said this was just because of the martyr that he had joined politics and wanted to serve the country and its people.
On the good performance of AAP in elections in Punjab, the comedian-turned-politician said, “I am going to meet AAP’s convener Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday and will hold talk with other leaders to make the organisational structure of the party stronger.”
He said he would request all prominent leaders of his party, including Kejriwal, Kumar Vishwas, Yogendra Yadav and others to visit the state and give special attention to it as people were fed with the Akali Dal, BJP and the Congress.
He told the AAP would also win the bypolls in three legislative assemblies of Dhuri, Talwandi Sabo and Patiala which had fallen vacant from after two sitting MLAs resigned, including Amarinder Singh who became the MP from Amritsar Lok Sabha seat.
Asked that people were now seeing him as the next chief minister of Punjab and AAP’s state president, he said the party would decide his role insisting he had entered the politics to serve people.
On possibility of Arun Jaitely becoming a cabinet minister in the next BJP-led government at the Centre, he said, “I will oppose his becoming a minister as he is not a representative of people in the Lok Sabha.”
Mann further claimed that revenue minister Bikram Singh Majithia did not know how to read Punjabi but his (Mann’s) kids wh o we re American citizens were not only able to speak but could also read their mother tongue more efficiently than Majithia.
He did not leave the opportunity to take a dig at SAD leaders Parkash Singh Badal, Sukhbir Badal, Bikram Majithia, Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa and Vijay Inder Singla in his trademark humour.
Mann on Friday won the election with the highest vote margin in Punjab by securing 5, 33,237 votes. He defeated ruling Shiromani Akali Dal ( Badal) candidate Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa by 2, 11,721 votes. Dhindsa secured 3, 21,516 votes, while sitting Congress MP Vijay Inder Singla trailed at third place with 181410 votes.