Jalandhar: Sacked Punjab Finance Minister
and SAD MLA Manpreet Singh Badal on Sunday asserted he would never join the Congress saying the party could not be an alternative
for him.
"I will never join the Congress. The party cannot be
an alternative for me," he told reporters here.
Reaffirming his allegiance to the Shiromani Akali
Dal, Manpreet said "I am an Akali and will always remain an
Akali."
Yesterday, addressing his supporters on his home turf
Gidderbaha in Muktsar district, he had said he was a born
Akali and had no intentions to leave SAD.
Asked whether he would float a new party, Manpreet
today said "everything will unfold with the passage of time."
The SAD legislator alleged his movements were being
restricted by the Punjab government. Two days earlier, his
former office was reportedly ransacked by some unidentified
persons in high-security Civil Secretariat in Chandigarh.
Questioning his suspension from the party, he said "I
want to know what indiscipline I had committed? Did I defy any
party whip? What crime I had committed?"
Fortyeight-year-old Manpreet, nephew of Chief Minister
Parkash Singh Badal, was axed from the SAD-BJP government on
October 13 following a raging row over Centre`s reported debt
waiver offer to the state.
PTI
