www.WeeklyVoice.com PUNJABA-16 | Friday, December 29, 2017
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CHANDIGARH: The SAD
on Sunday accused the Punjab
government of sacrilege over the
�morphing� of a picture of 10th
Sikh Guru Gobind Singh by using
one of French Emperor Napoleon
Bonaparte, a charge dismissed by
the authorities as �ridiculous�.
A computer-generated swap-
ping of faces was done for the
picture used in an advertisement
released by the Public Relations
Department to commemorate the
350th birth anniversary of the
Sikh Guru, the Shiromani Akali
Dal said and demanded strict ac-
tion against the erring oficials and the advertising agency con-
cerned. SAD Senior Vice Presi-
dent Daljit Singh Cheema said
the picture shown as that of Guru
Gobind Singh in the advertise-
ment was actually of Napoleon.
�An image of Guru Gobind
Singh ji�s face was swapped with
that of the French ruler through
computer on the picture. The
said painting dates back to 1800,
almost a century after Guru Sa-
hib�s period. I wonder why the
Congress government committed
this grave sin of passing off the
tampered picture as that of Guru
Sahib when plenty of the Gurus�
paintings are available,� Cheema
said in a statement here.
�The painting has the same
horse, with resemblance to face,
body, mane, tail, stirrups and
other things shown in the Napo-
leon�s painting. Even the clothes
Guru Gobind Singh ji is shown
wearing in the morphed picture
are the same as Napoleon�s in
the original painting,� the Akali
leader claimed.
He sought an immediate apolo-
gy from the government over the
alleged morphing and removal of
the painting from media and pub-
lic places.
In response, the government
rejected the charge of sacrilege
vis-a-vis advertisements issued in
connection with the 350th birth
anniversary celebrations of Guru
Gobind Singh.
CHANDIGARH: Former
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
and Punjab Chief Minister Ama-
rinder Singh on Sunday offered
prayers at the Takht Keshgarh
Sahib gurdwara in the Sikh holy
town of Anandpur Sahib to mark
the conclusion of the 350th birth
anniversary celebrations of tenth
and inal Sikh master, Guru Gobind Singh.
The shrine, considered second
most holiest in Sikh religion after
the Golden Temple in Amritsar,
is where Guru Gobind Singh an-
nounced the birth of the Khalsa
Panth on April 13, 1699.
Manmohan Singh said the
life and ideology of Guru
Gobind Singh showed the path
to strengthen the ethos of har-
mony, religious tolerance, peace
and brotherhood. �Guru Gobind
Singh never discriminated against
any religion, but respected all hu-
man beings, regardless of colour,
caste and creed,” said the irst Sikh Prime Minister (2004-2014)
of the country.
Amarinder Singh announced
the revival of the Anandpur Sahib
Urban Development Authority.
He also announced the setting up
of a skills university in Anandpur
Sahib, to be named after Guru
Gobind Singh.
Punjab Elections Re-Aligned State Politics
Ire Over Portrait Sacrilege Manmohan, Amarinder AtAnandpur Sahib
By Jaideep Sarin
CHANDIGARH: It was wide-
ly expected to be a crowning mo-
ment for the Aam Aadmi Party in
Punjab this year, but it was the
Congress which took top hon-
ours. The assembly election re-
sults in March clearly redeined the political space in the state.
Hitherto, Punjab was happy
to see a direct contest between
the Congress and the Shiromani
Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party
(SAD-BJP) alliance for the past
few decades. The emergence of
the AAP in the state�s political
scene this time saw a re-align-
ment of political forces. The
three-cornered contest, for the
irst time in Punjab, saw the Akali Dal-BJP alliance decimated.
The Congress, nine months
into power, swept the municipal
elections in the state in Decem-
ber. The opposition alleged booth
capturing, intimidation and mis-
use of power by the Congress.
While the SAD-BJP combine
won a few wards in the munici-
pal polls as a face saver, the AAP
clearly lost the trust of the voters.
The AAP which, at one stage
last year, was predicted to sweep
the assembly polls, ended up be-
ing the main opposition in the
assembly even though it was the
party’s irst outing in the assem-
bly elections. The party, which
seemed to have peaked elector-
ally a little too early, managed to
win 20 seats in the 117-member
assembly and even got the post of
Leader of Opposition (LoP).
The AAP�s performance, even
though the voters denied an out-
right victory and shot at power
in a full-ledged state outside of Delhi for the irst time, ended up with a respectable tally compared
to the mere 15 seats won by the
Akali Dal-BJP combine, which
had ruled the state for 10 years
(2007-2017).
The re-alignment in Punjab�s
political space was in the context
that it was for the irst time that all seats saw a three-cornered
contest with the AAP putting up
a ight on a number of seats to the traditional rivals -- the Congress
and the Akali Dal.
Even though the older parties
had tried to dismiss the AAP as
a �non-phenomena� in the run-up
to the assembly polls, the party
managed to hold its own.
The insistence of the AAP cen-
tral leadership on remote control-
ling the Punjab campaign with
leaders from other states, lack of
faith of local leadership, not be-
ing able to project a chief minis-
terial face, the breakdown of talks
with cricketer-turned-politician
Navjot Singh Sidhu (who ended
up in the Congress after leaving
the BJP), questions over choice of
candidates and inighting pushed the AAP away from power.
AAP leaders, including na-
tional convener and Delhi Chief
Minister Arvind Kejriwal, were
accused of being associated with
radical elements, including for-
mer terrorists. The ground reality
in Punjab, which saw a bloody
phase of terrorism between 1981
and 1995, is that not too many
people are aligned to the radical
ideology.
It was here that the AAP con-
ceded ground to the Congress,
which managed to beneit with Sikh and Hindu votes coming into
its kitty. The Sikh vote, which
was the stronghold of the Akali
Dal, and the Hindu vote in urban
areas which used to side with the
BJP, went to the Congress with a
lot of resentment among the peo-
ple against the decade-long Akali
Dal-BJP rule.
It was the virtual hatred towards
the Badal family (of former Chief
Minister Parkash Singh Badal)
on issues of corruption, drugs,
mis-governance and maia rule and the law-defying writ of the
��Halqa-incharge�� that the Akalis
promoted, which led to the deci-
mation of the SAD-BJP alliance.
While the Congress won an im-
pressive 77 seats in the 117-mem-
ber assembly, it was the Malwa
belt which helped the party romp
home in style. The Congress won
40 out of the 69 seats in the Mal-
wa belt -- the region south of the
river Sutlej and considered agri-
culturally fertile.
The AAP was considered the
strongest in the Malwa belt, since
it had won four Lok Sabha seats
in the 2014 parliamentary elec-
tions and had led in 34 assembly
seats at that time, but it could
manage a win only in 18 seats
in the assembly polls. Two more
seats in the belt were won by
AAP ally, Lok Insaaf Party.
The Congress dominated the
other two regions of Punjab
-- Majha and Doaba. The party
swept the entire Majha belt.
2017 IN RETROSPECT