AMRITSAR (TIP): A day before the arrival of his rival and Congress candidate from Amritsar seat Amarinder Singh, BJP candidate Arun Jaitley advised him to show decency. “Everyone in public life must be honest,” Jaitley wrote in his campaign diary on Thursday. “Most certainly the rulers and Maharajas should display greater probity and transparency than lesser mortals.”
Jaitley, along with his relatives, arrived here on Thursday to continue his election campaign, which is likely to hot up with Amarinder’s arrival on Friday. Jaitley said Amarinder was a chargesheeted man and was facing prosecution. He said he had gone into details of the chargesheet filed by the vigilance bureau in relation to a 2005 project in Ludhiana where all rules were allegedly flouted by the then government.
In his Facebook post, Jaitley has mentioned various anomalies in the project, including rigging of bids to favour a particular person. Reacting to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi‘s remark that BJP’s campaign balloon would burst like the ‘India Shining’ campaign in 2004, Jaitley said: “It’s election time, there is no point in making claims on whose balloon will burst. Congress leaders are not willing to face elections, those who had refused to contest elections have been sent to fight the battle”.
Jaitley arrived here along with his wife Sangeeta and daughter Sonali to strengthen his campaigning. “There is always a first time,” Sangeeta said. “Earlier he had been organizing elections and now he is himself contesting elections.” Sangeeta said she was born here while their relatives lived in Amritsar. But she is yet to brush up her knowledge about the issues facing the Amritsar parliamentary constituency. “We will see what are the issues here,” she said. She said she visits Amritsar every year to pay obeisance at Durgiana Temple, Golden Temple and Gurdwara Shaheedan Sahib.