Parkash Singh Badal comes to Majithia's defence in House

CHANDIGARH: Chief minister Parkash Singh Badal came to the defence of Punjab revenue minister Bikram Majithia in the assembly on Tuesday even as Congress continued to train its guns on the latter over the issue of drugs.
Advising the opposition to give the issue a break, Badal said, "Majithia was summoned by the Economic Directorate (ED) under Section 5 that authorizes it to call anyone to produce documents.He went there and there has been no word after that. He has not even been named in the challans filed in the case. Mere summoning doesn't make him an accused."
"It is a different matter if someone has been summoned by a competent court and you can call him an accused. But unless that happens, it is not fair to tarnish the person," said Badal, adding that he wondered how portions of the ED report reach the media."Uncorroborated evidence without specific details cannot be taken as a finding based on fact. The matter is in preview of court. Sometimes even well to do people are summoned. I myself, along with Sukhbir, used to be summoned by court and a peon would call out my name even though I was the chief minister. It was a painful experience," he added.
Speaking on the larger issue of drugs, he insisted that Punjab was only a transit route for synthetic drugs. "It is a national problem just like militancy and Punjab has done the maximum work to tackle the problem," the chief minister said.
Punjab police have nabbed 76 well-known smugglers from different parts of the country and 10 police cases were registered, he said.
Meanwhile, discussions on the motion of thanks to the governor's address moved by MLA Bibi Jagir Kaur in Punjab assembly, Badal made a plea for "vacating injustice meted out to Punjab in economic, political, territorial and religious spheres. He called for the transfer to Punjab of Chandigarh and other Punjabi speaking areas left out of the state at the time of linguistic reorganization of the state in 1966.
He demanded that injustice done to the state on river water issue be ended as per "the nationally and internationally accepted Riparian Principle. The chief minister said that a national consensus on the transfer of Chandigarh and the Punjabi speaking areas to Punjab.
He welcomed the setting up of special investigation team (SIT) by the NDA government to probe into the brutal killings of innocent Sikhs during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots with a sole objective to put the real perpetrators of this heinous crime behind the bars on one hand and to give justice to the victims.