Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh today rejected the allegations levelled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) over “rigging” of recent civic polls in the state as a “typical case of crying foul” in the face of their “imminent defeat” in these elections.

The results of these Punjab civic polls will be announced tomorrow.

“It’s a panic reaction to their inevitable wipeout in these polls,” the CM claimed, adding that the BJP and the AAP, as well as the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), were set to be “completely trounced” in these municipal polls. Their results, Captain Amarinder said, would be the “precursor of worse to come for these parties that have totally lost the confidence and trust of the people of Punjab”.

“All these parties have worked together to ruin Punjab, with the black farm laws the latest in the long line of their anti-people and anti- Punjab actions,” the CM alleged, adding that the “shock of their total rejection have unnerved their leaderships, who are desperately seeking refuge in lies and excuses to cover up their impending failure”.

“Why would my government or my party try to sabotage an election that we are clearly winning?” asked Capt Amarinder, urging the Opposition parties to “stop whining” and start introspecting on their policies and programmes. As in the case of the Republic Day violence in Delhi , any instances of violence in the Punjab municipal polls were the “handiwork of BJP and AAP working in collusion to seize the polls by hook or by crook”, he alleged.

Ridiculing BJP leader Tarun Chugh over his remarks that the people of Punjab were living in “terror and fear”, Capt Amarinder said the people of the whole country were, in fact, living under the dread of the “tyrannical” Central government, which had given up even the pretense of being a democratic regime.

“The BJP-led government at the Centre has become so despotic that it cannot tolerate the minimum of dissent, even on social media, which is why they probably believe that other parties are also running repressive regimes where ever they are in power,” he said.

The Congress has always upheld the Constitutional principles of democracy and the freedom of the citizens, and continues to do so in Punjab and other states where it is ruling, Capt Amarinder claimed.

He also charged that Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP was “nothing more than a tool of the BJP to spread misinformation, and promote its antipeople agenda”. He also alleged that the “lies of these parties are clearly motivated by their petty political agenda”.