Chandigarh, May 19 (IANS) Former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Thursday congratulated former Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar for joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), saying that the "right man is in the right party".
He said more leaders are likely to desert the sinking ship of the Congress in the coming days.
In a statement issued here, Amarinder Singh said the exodus from the Congress will continue and the party is headed for an imminent doom.
"Honest and upright leaders like him (Sunil) cannot breathe in the Congress anymore," he said, adding, "That space (in the Congress) has become too stifling and too suffocating."
The former Chief Minister recalled how within the span of less than a year, the Congress has completely collapsed in Punjab due to one wrong decision.
"I was the Chief Minister, while Sunil was the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee President, and everything was going so well. We were headed for repeating the government just less than a year ago," he said, adding, "One wrong decision by the leadership proved suicidal for the party that is now staring at its own doom in Punjab and elsewhere in the country."
Charging the Narendra Modi government with promoting a narrow-minded idea of India based on Hindutva, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Friday appealed to voters in Meghalaya not to vote for the BJP in the February 27 Assembly polls.
A 15-year-old girl, who had gone to answer nature's call, was gang-raped in Jharkhand's Chatra district and later burnt to death, police said on Friday.
A few lawmakers requested the Speaker to complete the proceedings before 12 noon, while others called for a "purification ritual" fearing the building was haunted.
