Sangrur: Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann has declared his party’s re-election in 2027 an inevitability, claiming the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has already fulfilled its core “guarantees” with a year of its term still to run.Speaking at the inauguration of a new subdivisional hospital on Tuesday, Mann took aim at a united opposition, asserting that traditional power brokers from the Congress and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) had been forced into a “chorus of fear” by AAP’s governance model. Mann dismissed opposition scepticism as a historical relic, noting that critics had written off the party’s chances in both 2017 and 2022.Mann ridiculed rivals who had previously labelled AAP a temporary phenomenon. “Ahead of 2022, they said nothing would happen, but we secured a landslide victory,” he said. The CM has predicted that opposition parties have already accepted defeat, suggesting they will continue their “performative” criticism through 2047 while AAP remains in power.Mann claimed his govt had completed its major promises in just four years, leaving the final year of the current term to take Punjab to a “new zenith”.Attacks on Political RivalsThe CM spared no vitriol for his predecessors and contemporaries, targeting Bikram Singh Majithia and the Badal family specifically. In a sharp rhetorical flourish, Mann mocked at Majithia’s recent bail in a drug-related case, symbolically twirling his moustache to mimic the Akali leader. “He has come out on bail in a ‘chitta’ (synthetic drug) case; did he win the Fort of Jamraud?” Mann asked the crowd.He further alleged that leaders across the political spectrum — including former CMs Captain Amarinder Singh and Charanjit Singh Channi — have joined forces solely to target him because they have no “real issues” left to present to the public.A “different” India: The Bhagat Singh visionA significant portion of Mann’s address was dedicated to the legacy of Shaheed Bhagat Singh. Mann posited that India’s contemporary struggles with bureaucracy and poverty were a result of failing the martyr’s post-independence vision. “If Bhagat Singh had lived… he should have been the first Prime Minister of the country,” Mann stated. “The entire map and destiny of the nation would have been different.”Mann argued that Bhagat Singh’s writings served as a manifesto for a country that should have moved beyond the “outdated patwari-tehsil system”. He claimed his administration was the first to truly attempt the “cleaning of the mess” left by 80 years of rule by “the wrong hands”.Commitment to FarmersMann has also invoked the memory of the 750 farmers who died during the agitation against the central govt’s now-repealed agri-marketing laws. He positioned AAP as the sole protector of the agrarian state’s interests, vowing that the “wise people of Punjab” would send the Congress and the Badals into “political oblivion” in the next election cycle.MSID:: 129636063 413 |
