In an interview that takes a very different stand on Amritpal Singh and Waris Punjab De to the majority of the media and most opposition politicians, Punjab’s longest serving finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal, who served in both Akali and Congress governments but is now a member of the BJP, says Amritpal Singh is “insignificant…a media sensation”, adding the Punjab police’s inability to arrest him even after a six-day search is “a minor security failure” and “not a matter of concern in the way the media is splashing it on front pages”.
Badal, who served as finance minister of Punjab for nine years, also says that the Khalistan sentiment is not reviving in Punjab and Amritpal Singh and his Waris Punjab De do not pose a threat to the state. Punjab has many other problems, which are serious, but adding Amritpal Singh does not make them any worse or more worrisome.
In an interview to The Wire, Badal, who served for a total of nine years altogether as finance minister of Punjab, admitted that the state police “may have bungled it up” and the government should not have “capitulated” at the time of the Ajnala incident on February 23, but went on to reinforce his original view that Amritpal Singh is insignificant and this is only “a minor security failure”. He specifically added this is “not a major catastrophe for Punjab”. He says Amritpal Singh is a fringe element and has perhaps a few hundred followers, at most a thousand.
Badal said that by running away and hiding from justice and the police, Amritpal Singh has damaged his image as a rebel. As he put it, “To be a rebel is quintessentially Punjabi but rebels take a stand and rebels don’t run away.”
He believes that Amritpal Singh is being supported by and is the face of a new attempt being made by Pakistan and the ISI to rekindle the flame of Khalistan in Punjab and break Punjab from the rest of the country.
