Land scam report will echo on last day of Punjab Assembly

Chandigarh, Sep 9 (UNI) The last day of the Monsoon session of the Punjab Assembly is expected to witness acrimonious scenes with the opposition adament on disrupting the proceedings over the 32.10-acre Amritsar Improvement Trust land scam, in which former chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh has been indicted along with three of his Congress party colleagues by a nine-member House Committee.

When the assembly meets tomorrow after a four-day break, the Congress would demand the withdrawl of the land scam report from the House or its scrapping. Leader of the Opposition Rajinder Kaur Bhattal had already made it clear that they would allow the proceedings of the House only when the report is withdrawn as the matter was sub judice.

The Congress had disrupted the proceedings of the Assembly on Friday when the report was laid on the table of the House by the House Committee Chairman, Harish Rai Dhanda of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD). This had forced Speaker Nirmal Singh Kahlon to adjourn the House one hour ahead of the scheduled time.

The ruling SAD-BJP has already issued a whip to all its 68 legislatures to be present in the House tomorrow.

The Congress has 44 MLAs, while five are Independents.

An important meeting of the Punjab Congress would be held tomorrow, prior to the start of the session to discuss the strategy to be adopted in the Vidhan Sabha. Besides Capt Singh, others indicted in the inquiry are former minister Chaudhary Jagjit Singh, former Amritsar Improvement Trust Chairman, Jugal Kishore Sharma and another former minister, late Raghunath Sahay Puri.

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