While Guru Gobind Singh sacrificed his entire family for the Panth, the Badal family has been sacrificing the Panth for the family — with this sharp rebuke aimed at the SAD (B) president, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Monday evening set the tone for a blistering, satire-laced address at the Lok Milni programme held at village Panjgrain Kalan in the Jaito assembly segment of Faridkot district, where an impressive gathering of residents from Panjgrain Kalan and adjoining villages, with a particularly large turnout of women, came to listen the Chief Minister.
In his 35-minute address that drew repeated applause, Mann trained his barbs on SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal, accusing the Akali leadership of using religion as an instrument of political convenience, changing Jathedars at will to serve their political ends and treating one family as the entire Panth.
“The Akalis have only one MLA left, and even she remained absent during the vote on the anti-sacrilege legislation," he said, adding that after the new anti-sacrilege law, no one would dare commit such an offence again.
Taking a dig at Sukhbir Badal’s public utterances, the Chief Minister remarked that his lectures carried little meaning or substance.
Turning to the Congress-Akali nexus, Mann said that for several decades, the two parties had been taking turns to plunder Punjab, and that an invisible tactical understanding existed between them. I used to make satirical videos to expose this arrangement, but my videos failed to make any impact. So I decided to jump into this morass myself to clean it up, he said.
He recalled that while successive state governments had patronised the drug trade and ministers were directly involved in it, Punjab’s youth were fleeing to Australia and Canada for survival.
“Our children were running to foreign countries to earn a livelihood, while leaders were calling back their foreign-educated children to Punjab to continue the loot of their fathers," he said, naming Sukhbir Badal.
Mann said unlike his predecessors who woke up to governance only in the last three months of their tenures, he had begun work from his very first day in office. He listed a series of his government’s achievements — free power supply to 90 per cent of households, daytime electricity to tubewells, and a dramatic rise in canal water utilisation from 22 per cent before 2022 to over 80 per cent today.
On school education, he said Punjab had climbed from 27th position to first in the country, adding that he personally meets the top ten rank-holders. “The Atta Dal scheme can fill your stomach, but it is only education that will lift you out of poverty," he said.
Flaunting the Rs 10 lakh health insurance card, Mann said 47 lakh cards had already been issued under the scheme and 15 lakh more were being processed. “We have already spent Rs 660 crore under this scheme — there is nothing like it anywhere in the world," he said.
The Chief Minister announced that from July 1, all eligible women would receive three months of pension in a single instalment. “This is not to make you rich — it is a token of honour from the state government," he said.
Mann distributed cheques and benefits worth Rs 3.86 crore among beneficiaries at the event. In a lighter moment that drew an enthusiastic response from the largely female audience, he ended his address with his trademark kikli, a traditional Punjabi folk performance, hitting the Akali Dal leaders with satirical comments.
He said that while as an artist he might have received Rs 10 lakh for his visit to Punjgrain Kalan, the people of Punjab had elevated him to a position where he was today giving Rs 50 lakh to them.
