Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann Saturday said Punjab will vehemently oppose the “unfair, faulty and undemocratic delimitation” exercise as it aims at increasing the seats in states where BJP wins and reduce in states where it loses.
“This shameful act of BJP to reduce the seats in the states where they can’t win is undemocratic and we would not allow the saffron party to succeed in its nefarious designs to weaken the democracy”, said Mann.
In Punjab, the BJP does not win. “They do not have a single set out of the (present) 13,” he added.
He was talking to the media after attending the first Joint Action Committee (JAC) meeting on Delimitation called by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin.
Mann said that this arbitrary move of the Union government is aimed at eliminating the opposition parties by reducing the seats where BJP is not able to win. He said that BJP is trying its level best to enhance the seats in Hindi belt where it gets most of the seats. Mann said that it is ironic that in the name of population density, the seats are being reduced in South Indian seats.
The Chief Minister said the southern seats are being punished for zealously implementing population control programmes. He said that it will not be a surprise if the BJP enhances the tally of seats in Uttar Pradesh from 80 to more than 140 after the delimitation. Mann said that the idea is to bifurcate or even trifurcate the seats which are the stronghold of the saffron party and to carve out more winning seats from it.
Citing an example, Mann said that the Sangrur Lok Sabha seat earlier represented by him comprised three districts Sangrur, Barnala and Malerkotla. He said that supposing if this seat was monopoly of BJP then as per their current designs they would trifurcate this seat in three and carve out Sangrur, Barnala and Malerkotla as separate Lok Sabha seats. Mann said that this is how the BJP intends to increase the Lok Sabha seats from 543 to 850 or more to consolidate its position.
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Mann said that the BJP wants to eliminate the belts where they are weak and enhance the seats where they are strong. However, he said that this is intolerable, unwarranted and undesirable adding that it will be opposed tooth and nail. Mann said that power mad BJP is trying to weaken the democracy in the country but this will never be allowed at any cost.
The Chief Minister said that the BJP wants to humiliate Punjab, which has made enormous sacrifices in the national freedom struggle, through this delimitation. He said that currently the state has 13 Lok Sabha seats through which the share of Punjab in the temple of democracy is 2.39%. However, Mann said that BJP intends to increase Lok Sabha seats in the state to 18 but it will reduce the percentage of state’s share to 2.11%.
Mann said that this will not be accepted as the share of the state which has 90% sacrifices for freedom of the country should not be reduced. He said that rather than the share should be increased or kept the same by enhancing the seats to 21. Meanwhile, Mann assured fulsome support and cooperation to all the like minded parties for opposing this draconian move in form of delimitation adding he invited all the parties to hold next conference in any city of Punjab.
Mann further claimed that “south is facing loss,” and asked if the southern states were being punished for reducing population.
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The first meeting of JAC was held in Chennai today. The meeting was attended by various political leaders, including Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan, Odisha Congress President Bhakta Charan Das, and Biju Janata Dal leader Sanjay Kumar Das Burma, among others.