Akali Dal slams Amarinder’s Response to Amritsar Train Tragedy

Chandigarh: Shiromani Akali Dal patriarch Parkash Singh Badal on Tuesday slammed Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh for going on a foreign trip, ignoring the plight of families who lost their kins in the Amritsar train tragedy on October 19. Badal, a former Chief Minister of the state, termed the accident on Dussehra day “a man-made tragedy of an unprecedented magnitude”, and took to task the Congress government for its “shocking and heartless non-seriousness” in responding to the terrible tragedy in which about 60 people lost their lives.

“Nothing symbolises this non-seriousness and indifference more than the decision of the Chief Minister to desert the people in their hour of extreme grief,” Badal said here after a SAD-BJP delegation met Punjab Governor V.P. Singh Badnore and sought his intervention to ensure justice to the victims and punishment to the guilty in the Amritsar tragedy.

“I find it insensitive and careless beyond belief that the Chief Minister chose to leave his state and his people to their own fate and decided to proceed on an utterly avoidable foreign trip. In his shoes, I would have cancelled the trip,” Badal, 90, told reporters here. (IANS)