BJP asks Dal Khalsa not to follow Raj Thackery

Hoshiarpur, Nov 2 (UNI) Punjab BJP president Rajinder Bhandari today issued a stern warning to the Dal Khalsa, a radical Sikh organisation, for following in the footsteps of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray and calling for restricting the flow of migrant labourers to Punjab.

Reacting to the Punjab Jagran March taken out by the Dal Khalsa here yesterday against influx of migrants into Punjab, Mr Bhandari said that BJP would not allow anyone to create a Maharashtra like situation in the border state.

Talking to newspersons here today, Mr Bhandari alongwith senior leader Balramjit Dass Tandon said that such moves from any quarter would be crushed with strong hands.

''India was a sovereign state and all of its citizens were free to work or settle in any part of the country'', the two leaders said.

Narrow politics and vested interests could lead the country towards disunity and disintegration, which could not be tolerated, they asserted.

Mr Bhandari alleged that Raj Thackeray had become a tool in the hands of the Congress, which was playing a dirty game at the cost of country's unity and integrity for petty political gains in the forthcoming elections to Parliament and to weaken the NDA constituents.

Blaming the police for falsely implicating Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur in terrorist activities, Mr Bhandari said that there was no such thing as 'Hindu terrorism' prevailing in any part of the country. ''The Sadhvi was a spiritual woman and had nothing to do with terrorism and politics and involving persons like her in false cases would prove a last nail in the coffin of the Congress and its allied political parties'', he added.

Mr Bhandari said that the BJP could demand more than three seats from its senior alliance partner, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in the next Lok Sabha polls. In the last polls the BJP had contested from the three seats of Hoshiarpur, Gurdaspur and Amritsatr, while SAD had fought on 10 seats.

Mr Bhandari hinted that the BJP may 'exchange' the Hoshiarpur seat which had become a reserved constituency while in the last elections it was in the general category.

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