Punjab Chief Minister (CM) Amarinder Singh on Monday said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was converting the entire country into Shaheen Bagh and using it to polarise elections in Delhi.

Amarinder, who was addressing a public meeting in Delhi’s Hari Nagar in favour of Congress candidate Surinder Setia, said the BJP was “attempting to polarise the elections here with protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act or CAA in Shaheen Bagh in Delhi but they will not succeed as people have seen through their game”. He said the entire country had in fact become Shaheen Bagh with protests against CAA and NRC happening across the nation.

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“There is unrest in universities. Students are on the streets across the country, and are being shot at,” he said, adding that this was not the India for which so many had sacrificed themselves. In contrast to the divisive politics of the BJP, which had weakened the nation, Congress had always worked towards strengthening India,” he added. Amarinder said in Assam, the names of 19 lakh people had been included in the National Register of Citizens (NRC). “Will they put them all in detention camps that they have built,” asking where will all those people, who are being branded as non-citizens, go?

He also slammed his Delhi counterpart and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal on his tall claims on providing cheap power to Delhiites and said that the latter was a shifty character who had mastered the art of deceit and lies to mislead the people.

Taking on Kejriwal, Amarinder said that the AAP leader had done nothing exceptional by providing cheap power and setting up mohalla clinics as all CMs of Congress-ruled states were doing so. “Some people will surely be happy with these freebies but what has he really done for the development and progress of Delhi? What has he done for creating jobs for your children,” he said while questioning Kejriwal on how many jobs had AAP given to youth in Delhi.

While Amarinder refused to predict how many seats Congress will win in Delhi, he said that the party was in a strong position. He said the claims of an AAP wave in Delhi were a myth as it was in Punjab in 2017 where they managed to win only 20 seats despite the hype.