Sidhu, Punjab cabinet ministers detained on UP border
Darpan News Desk IANS, 07 Oct, 2021 11:03 AM
Chandigarh, Oct 7 (IANS) Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu along with Cabinet ministers and leaders were detained on Thursday on the Haryana-Uttar Pradesh border in Saharanpur as they were heading towards Lakhimpur Kheri where nine people were killed in violence that erupted during farmers' protests on Sunday (October 3).
They have been staging a sit-in protest at the border.
The leaders have been demanding the arrest of Union Minister Ajay Kumar Mishra's son Ashish Mishra in connection with the death of farmers during the violence.
Sidhu threatened to go on hunger strike if action is not taken against the minister's son by Friday.
He was accompanying Deputy Chief Minister Sukhjinder Randhawa and cabinet ministers Pargat Singh and Vijay Inder Singla, besides former ministers Balbir Singh Sidhu, Gurpreet Kangar and Sunder Shyam Arora and other leaders.
Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi also joined Sidhu for a brief period when the vehicular march started in the morning from Mohali, near here.
The non-recognition of the Covishield vaccine has impacted the Indians, especially students travelling to the UK. This issue was flagged during the meeting between Indian External Affairs Minister Dr Jaishankar and UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss on Monday in Washington DC.
She reached Chandigarh, the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana, by air in the morning from where she headed straight to her daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's cottage located amid forests of pine and cedar on the suburbs of the Himachal Pradesh capital.
Channi took oath of office along with his two deputies -- one a Jat Sikh and another belonging to the Hindu community -- at a simple ceremony here in the Punjab capital that was delayed for 20 minutes owing to the late arrival of party leader Rahul Gandhi.
Jasbir Singh Virk, president of Bhartiya Sikh Sangthan, has underlined the need to intensify the ongoing farmers' agitation and said that there was a need to shore up strength at the Delhi borders.
Punjab BJP President Ashwani Sharma told IANS that to control infighting in its party state unit, the Congress leadership made Channi ji (Charanjit Singh Channi) the Punjab Chief Minister but insulted the Dalit community by not allowing him to lead the party in the upcoming state Assembly polls.
The government and drug controller's office will have to take a decision on the third booster dose based on data and cases as times goes on and including how effective the vaccine is on the Delta virus variant, he added.
