'Panel tried hard but still failed to indict SAD govt'

CHANDIGARH: SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal on Tuesday claimed "despite the best efforts of Justice Ranjit Singh (retd) to falsely implicate the previous SAD-BJP government in sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib, the former judge had miserably failed to indict either the previous government or any of its leaders."
Sukhbir challenged the state government to identify even a single issue or case in which the commission's report had been able to indict the SAD- BJP government.
The SAD president stated that SAD-BJP MLAs were forced by the speaker to boycott the session as their voice was gagged by allotting just 14 minutes to present their full case. "We were forced to hold a parallel session as we were denied the right to free speech inside the House. We wanted to discuss the report of the commission and to blow it to pieces in the House," he added.
Before the SAD-BJP legislators staged a walkout, they raised slogans in the well and scattered copies of the commission report for which Congress ministers as well as MLAs demanded criminal action against them.
The former deputy CM said, "All that the sacrilege report has succeeded in making are indirect insinuations, assumptions and guesses. This is the most hazy, vague and un-judicial report ever supposedly authored by a former judge."
He alleged the conspiracy was hatched by the Congress and its government with the commission meant merely to defame the SAD among the Sikh masses.
Sukhbir said the time granted by the speaker to the SAD did not amount to even one minute per MLA of the party. "We had to boycott the session... because the speaker allowed just 14 minutes to us while allowing almost 2 hours to the ruling party. The speaker tried to save the ruling party and its allies from ending up with egg on their faces." The only way the speaker could save the incumbent party was by denying the SAD and the BJP the necessary time to discuss the report, he said.