Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Punjab senior leader and Leader of Opposition (LoP) Harpal Singh Cheema has described the three-member

Chandigarh: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Punjab senior leader and Leader of Opposition (LoP) Harpal Singh Cheema has described the three-member Special Investigation Team (SIT), headed by Cabinet Minister Sukhbinder Singh Sarkaria to probe the illicit distilleries and liquor smuggling in the state, as a mere ploy to hoodwink innocent people of the state, dismissing out rightly and dubbing it as 'Sarkaria Clean Chit' commission.

Harpal Cheema In a statement issued from party headquarters in Chandigarh on Saturday, Harpal Singh Cheema said that the setting up of the Sarkaria-led SIT was a well thought-out design to offer protective cover to the government-sponsored liquor mafia in the state as also to take the innocent people for a ride.

He cautioned that AAP won’t allow it happen and would knock every door to wake up people and making them aware of all such scams involving the who’s who of polity and civil administration.

Cheema fired the salvo questioning the propriety of the minister heading the SIT, saying how could a minister do justice to the probe where the multi-billion rupee liquor trade had the patronage of the political high and mighty?

AAPHow could a minister be impartial in investigating the liquor mafia and a large scale peddling of liquor, being allegedly run by the Chief Minister of the state, who also held the excise department portfolio?

The LoP said that if Chief Minister Capt. Amarinder Singh had been alive to the seriousness of the issue and a thorough probe into the illicit liquor and its open smuggling, he would have constituted a Judicial Inquiry Commission under the watch High Court, but was deliberately not done due to his alleged involvement in the illicit liquor trade in cahoots with liquor mafia lords.

Harpal Singh Cheema accused the Badals of adopting double standards and asked why Sukhbir Singh Badal and Bikram Singh Majithia never uttered a single word against Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on the issue of liquor mafia calling the shots in the state and his (CM’s) tacit support to have its way.

Harpal Singh and Capt Amarinder SinghCheema alleged that Captain and Badal were taking turns in an open ‘loot’ of Punjab and its people, alleging that all the SITs and inquiry commissions set up by the government so far had been a misnomer, both Captains and the Badals were leveraging them either to give clean chits to each other or resort to delay the probes to protect each other.

Cheema lamented that the role of Punjab Police in effectively dealing with all kinds of mafias in the state, including liquor mafia indulging in open smuggling liquor, saying both Captain and Badals had brought the entire law and order situation to an abysmal mess by politicalizing the Punjab force.