BATHINDA/AMRITSAR: SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal has claimed that Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann was high on liquor when he came to pay obeisance at Takht Damdama Sahib.
Addressing the media in Bathinda on the occasion of Baisakhi at Talwandi Sabo on Thursday, Sukhbir said, “It is intolerable that a CM comes to a Takht inebriated. I didn’t want to criticise this government for the first six months but I couldn’t take it silently when I came to know about his coming to the Sikhs’ revered place in a drunken state. He has done it twice now. He even went to the Bargari morcha in an inebriated state and people had to turn him out. Now that he is a chief minister, he expected him to know his maryada.”
In Amritsar, senior Akali member Virsa Singh Valtoha requested Akal Takht’s officiating jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh to take action against Mann based on panthic maryada (Sikh code of religious conduct) because the CM had “come inebriated to a revered place”.
In his statement, Valtoha alleged that Mann had also addressed a state-level Ambedkar Jayanti function in Jalandhar under the influence of liquor.
Demanding a medical examination of the CM, Valtoha said: “If the test proves me wrong, then the SAD will tender a public apology and face any punishment. But if the allegations turn out to be true, then a case under Section 295-A (deliberate and malicious acts to outrage religious feelings) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) should be registered against the chief minister.”
