AAP is 'laughing stock' on Coronavirus management: Punjab minister

Chandigarh: Ridiculing the so-called "Delhi model" as nothing more than a desperate bid by the Arvind Kejriwal government to divert attention from its own failures, Punjab Health Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu on Sunday said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was making a laughing stock of itself with its absurd claims on Covid-19 management in the national capital.

The minister termed Punjab Leader of Opposition Harpal Singh Cheema's statement expressing "dissatisfaction" over the Amarinder Singh government's measures to tackle the pandemic as "ludicrous", and said the AAP MLA was clearly oblivious to the fact that Punjab continues to fare much better than many other states in the fight against coronavirus, which in fact had totally exposed Delhi's inadequate health care infrastructure.

Sidhu pointed out that the effectiveness of Punjab's battle against Covid was not on account of any help from the central government, unlike Delhi where the Centre had to step in and virtually take over the pandemic management to pull the city out of the "total and unprecedented mess" into which the AAP government had pushed it.

The less said about the AAP government's Covid management in Delhi the better, said the minister, pointing out that even now, the Delhi High Court was continuously questioning and, in fact, pulling up the Kejriwal government over its pandemic strategy.

Just last week, the court had termed as 'incomprehensible" the resistance shown by Delhi government on its monitoring the progress made in ramping up testing, Sidhu recalled.

"What Delhi model is this, which even the High Court is not satisfied with?" he asked, adding that Punjab remains far ahead of Delhi in terms of effectiveness in Covid management.

Given that the entire testing strategy of the Delhi government was under the court's scanner, Cheema's insistence on Punjab adopting the same strategy was not just laughable but a clear indication that the AAP was not interested in protecting the people of Punjab, said Sidhu.

All they (AAP) have ever cared about was promoting their own interests, which the people of Punjab had seen through back in 2017 itself when they had shattered the party's dreams of forming the government in the state, Sidhu added.