TEAM HERALD
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PANJIM: Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal Tuesday said that the countdown for Lok Sabha elections in the country had begun while speaking at a city hotel at the end of a two-day Vichar Sammelan of the Shiromani Akali Dal- Bharatiya Janata Party Alliance.
Badal was accompanied by the SAD president and Deputy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal and his Advisor on National Affairs and Media, Harcharan Bains.
About the timing of the Lok Sabha poll, the Deputy Chief Minister said that that these elections could be held sometime around September this year.
“We are all geared up for the battle and are eagerly awaiting the day. SAD-BJP will sweep Punjab and NDA is all set to form a government at the Center,” he said.
When CM Badal was asked if his party would support Narendra Modi as NDA’s Prime Ministerial candidate, he said: “We are with the NDA and would go by the decision of the BJP in the matter. The Deputy CM also echoed Badal’s views, adding, “The BJP is the dominant partner in the NDA and the SAD would respect their prerogative.”
However, Badal ruled out any re-look at the seat-sharing arrangement with the BJP in Punjab where SAD is the dominant partner. “We have a complete understanding as alliance partners, as ours is not merely a political tie-up but a social and emotional bonding for peace and communal harmony in the state.”
The Punjab chief minister said that he was totally satisfied with the outcome of the heart-to-heart deliberations at the conclave and that the two parties would hold more such sammelans in future. The next conclave would be held at Shri Huzoor Sahib, Nanded Sahib, Maharashtra.
The Chief Minister, the Deputy Chief Minister and senior Akali and BJP leaders also attended a high tea hosted by the Goa Chief Minister Monohar Parrikar. All members of the delegation also visited the Goan Vidhan Sabha and attended the on going session for about half an hour.
Listing the prominent gains to have emerged from the two day sammelan, the SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal said that the two parties had come to understand better how to further speed up their responses to the people’s aspirations and to further consolidate their close relationship with the masses by fine-tuning their policies, strategies and implementation net-work. Singh said that the detached and objective manner in which issues pertaining to the people and the alliance government’s approach to these issues were discussed over the past two days had provided greater insights into the subtleties of the problems and the challenges posed by various elements and that it had been possible to assess, re-assess and re-evaluate our responses and performances in meeting challenges posed by such menaces as drugs, corruption, people-bureaucracy and politician-bureaucracy equations.
According to CM’s Advisor Harcharan Bains, all legislators, MPs, candidates for the last assembly and Lok Sabha polls, principal office bearers and other leading lights of the SAD and the BJP (Punjab Unit) expressed their views on various subjects on the concluding day of the convention organized at the initiative of the SAD president and Punjab Deputy Chief MinisterSukhbir Singh Badal.
The main aim of the convention was to assess the implementation of various programmes and schemes launched by the Alliance government in Punjab and to study ways to further strengthen the close day to day interaction between the party leaders and workers on the one hand and between workers and people at the grass-root levels on the other, said Bains, in a statement released to the press later in the afternoon.
