Barjinder Singh Hamdard, managing editor of Ajit, a Punjabi language newspaper, has been summoned by the Punjab Vigilance Bureau (VB) for questioning in a case related to the Jang-e-Azadi project at Kartarpur, Jalandhar.
The Jang-e-Azadi project, a venture of the previous Parkash Singh Badal government, was completed in 2016 at a cost over Rs 300 crore. Hamdard was member secretary of the Jang-e-Azadi Memorial Foundation and chairperson of its executive committee. He resigned from the posts accusing the Aam Aadmi Party (AA) of tarnishing the memorial’s reputation by frequently sending police and vigilance teams there.
Meanwhile, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal on Friday condemned the persecution of the Padma Bhushan awardee and MD of the Ajit group by the AAP Government He called summons served on Dr Hamdard by the State Vigilance Bureau a “brazen act of a power drunk chief minister who wanted to exact revenge against the Ajit MD for his principled stand on Freedom of the Press”.
In a statement here, the SAD president said Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann first stopped releasing advertisements to the Ajit newspaper. “Then it (his government) started intimidating functionaries of the Ajit, and now it has stooped to persecuting its managing editor. “This is the height of vendetta politics and is totally unacceptable in a democracy,” he said.