Taking a dig at Chatrath for issuing notices to two party MLAs Rana Gurmeet Sodhi and Kewal Dhillon on Thursday for openly seeking Bajwa's resignation, Amarinder asked him if he could initiate similar disciplinary proceedings against Bajwa and his brother.
Replying to the charge, Chatrath said, “Neither during election nor after so many days, Amarinder had raised the issue of Bajwa brothers.”
Launching a counter attack, he said Congress lost two successive Assembly polls in 2007 and 2012 when Amarinder was Punjab Congress chief and in 2004 Lok Sabha polls, when Amarinder was the Chief Minister, Congress could manage only two seas, but no body questioned about his role or asked him (Amarinder) to step down.
Yesterday, Amarinder had condemned the serving of disciplinary notices to the MLAs and termed the action as attempts to “gag the popular sentiment” in the party. Meanwhile, some Punjab Congress MLAs and other senior leaders challenged the moral authority of Amarinder to question Bajwa's leadership, reminding him that the party had been reduced to just two seats in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections when he was the chief minister.
In a statement, these leaders reminded Amarinder that he did not offer his resignation to the party high command, neither did he own the responsibility at that time. The leaders include MLAs Parminder Singh Pinki, Om Parkash Soni, Karan Brar, Ajit Inder Singh Mofar, Bharat Bhushan Ashu, Sangat Singh Gilzian and Randip Singh Nabha. They said in the North, Punjab was the only state where Congress managed to retain three seats out of 13 and the situation would have been entirely different, but for intervention by Aam Aadmi Party.
The Congress was close second on the four seats won by AAP. They pointed out that most of the party MLAs from whose Assembly segments the Congress lost had shifted to Amritsar to campaign for Amarinder.
Also, they recalled that it was Bajwa under whose leadership the party had launched a massive anti-drug campaign which had received an overwhelming response. However, it was Amarinder who had played a dubious role by opposing Punjab Congress demand for a CBI probe into the multi-crore synthetic drug case, they said.
They also challenged Amarinder questioning the authority of Chatrath in issuing show cause notices to two MLAs. Amarinder Singh won from Amritsar, defeating BJP's heavyweight Arun Jaitley. Bajwa had to face defeat at the hands of saffron party leader Vinod Khanna from Gurdaspur.
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