AAP police complaint against BJP over horse-trading charge

Ruling party names 11 MLAs who were offered `25 crore each to break away

Stepping up its attack on BJP’s 'Operation Lotus’, the ruling Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab on Wednesday lodged a complaint with the director general of police reiterating its allegations that the BJP was trying to “buy’’ its legislators to topple the state government, naming its 11 MLAs who were approached by the saffron camp.

Accompanied by the 11 MLAs, Punjab Finance Minister Harpal Cheema met DGP Gaurav Yadav in Chandigarh on Wednesday and filed the complaint, accusing the BJP of trying to topple the AAP government in Punjab by offering up to Rs25 crore each.

The minister said the AAP legislators were Baljinder Kaur, Sheetal Angural, Dinesh Chadha, Raman Arora,

Budh Ram, Kulwant Pandori, Narinder Bharaj, Rajnish Dahiya, Manjit Bilaspur, Rupinder Happy and Labh Singh Ugoke. Jalandhar MLA Sheetal Angural was also given a death threat, he alleged.

AAP fooling people and the media: BJP

Rebuking AAP charges, the state BJP’s chief spokesperson Anil Sareen, however, held that the AAP was only trying to befool the Punjabis and the media while Cheema’s allegations were just a bunch of lies.

Sareen told the FPJ that it was surprising that the AAP which had government in the state and that too with an absolute majority, was shying away from telling the police the names or particulars of persons who had called the AAP MLAs physically or telephonically and getting a first information report (FIR) registered against the “guilty”.

Alleging that the AAP was just trying to play to the gallery, Sareen held in fact, it was a habit of the AAP leaders to divert the attention of the public from its failures by raising false and concocted stories and hide the ongoing bitter conflict between Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and party’s convener Arjind Kejriwal and too much interference of the latter in the state affairs.

Sareen alleged it was an attempt of the Punjab ruling party unit to divert the public attention from corruption cases involving its own leaders, the latest case being against its food processing and horticulture minister Fauja Singh Sarari, who was in news for allegedly making an “extortion” plan.