Indian Thought Latest News & Views
New Delhi. Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, replying to those who accused him of drinking alcohol, said that if he drinks alcohol daily for the last 12 years, then how is he alive? In a TV show, he asked if he was still alive as people say and whether his liver is of iron? He said that how come people say that I am an alcoholic who cannot stop drinking.
CM Bhagwant Mann said that ‘when people (88 percent) have nothing, they start saying that I am drinking. But every day I wake up at 6 in the morning and ask for the work file, the amount of work that was not done in 75 years, that much work has been done in one and a quarter years. CM Mann explained how under his government, 88 percent of households in the state now have free electricity… and the amount of coal available today is like never before.
Have resolved to quit drinking in 2019
Bhagwant Mann said, ‘There should be intention to work.’ However, there have been repeated allegations against him that he is addicted to alcohol. Earlier in January 2019, at a rally, Bhagwant Mann publicly took a pledge to give up alcohol in the presence of AAP supremo and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his mother. In April last year, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) had alleged that CM Mann had entered Takht Damdama Sahib in an inebriated condition. The organization had also demanded an apology from the Chief Minister of Punjab.
Allegations have been made even before drinking alcohol
In a release issued in Amritsar, SGPC senior vice-president Raghujit Singh Virk had said that the chief minister visited a highly revered spiritual site of the Sikh community in an inebriated state and “violated the Sikh rahat maryada (code of conduct)”. Mann was asked to accept his mistake and apologize to the entire Sikh community. According to the press release “CM’s conduct shows that he did not give due respect to Guru Ghar. In this way, he also reduced the prestige of the constitutional office of CM.
