By Abhijit Prashar-
CHANDIGARH: Punjab Youth Congress (PYC) is set to continue its campaign of pasting pictures of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh alongside those of state Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on ‘108’Ambulances in the state.
Addressing the media, PYC president Vikramjit Singh Chaudhary said, “Till such time that the ruling alliance does not give up its narrow mindset and cheap publicity gimmicks by usurping credit ofCentrally-funded poverty alleviation welfare schemes in their own name, such forms of campaigns would continue all over the state.”
He said, “As many as 77 youth leaders have been wrongly implicated in FIRs registered under Punjab Prevention of defacement of Property Act. How is pasting the country’s Prime Minister’s photograph on a flagship programme initiated by the Union government be termed as a criminal offence? Instead, the state government should be held guilty of defacement of property of Union government as they affixed photographs of the Chief Minister on ambulances provided to the state by the Centre.”
Chaudhary said, “We demand that the defacement cases against all 77 party workers be quashed as we have not done anything wrong. If this is not done, we would approach the courts. We had passed on strict instructions to our party colleagues that no ambulance would be stopped while travelling on roads as there might be a patient inside. They were asked to only affix the PM’s photographs on stationaryambulances.”
He also demanded that cases be registered against cops who tore the PM’s photos, namely SHO division no 1 Inspector Balbir Singh, ASI Amarjit Singh Tahli at Jalandhar, SHO Lehragaga Baljit Singh at Sangrur.
Other party leaders who were present at the interaction were Gurvir Singh Bhattal, Yadavindra Singh Kang, Deepinder Singh Randhawa, Poonam Kangra, Gurjot Singh Dhindsa, Tanuj Mahajan, Vikas Soni, Gurkeemat Sidhu, Paramjeet Singh Bal, Rajesh Agnihotri, Gurmukh Singh, Gurinder Pal Singh, Sushil Kumar Rinku.
