PM Modi was driving to attend a rally in Punjab’s Ferozepur when his convoy was caught in the middle of a flyover with protesting farmers blocking the route.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had cancelled his scheduled visit to Punjab’s Ferozepur due to a major security breach. The Ministry of Home Affairs has released a detailed statement on the security breach during PM Modi’s Punjab visit.
In the clip, a group carrying a BJP flag is seen shouting slogans of “BJP Zindabad” while standing dangerously close to the Prime Minister’s car – a black Toyota Fortuner -on the other side of the highway.
Just before the Punjab election, the incident has escalated political sparring between the ruling BJP at the Centre and Punjab’s ruling Congress.
The Punjab government has alleged that there was a last-minute plan change in which it had no role. PM Modi was to fly to the rally site by a helicopter but due to bad weather, decided to travel the 111-km distance by road.
In general, the protection of all VIPs, like the protection of other citizens, is the responsibility of state police forces. In the Ferozepur case, the responsibility of ensuring the PM’s safety thus lay with the Punjab government, and the state’s Director-General of Police. Instead of seeking to duck responsibility, Punjab chief minister Charanjeet Singh Channi ought to be asking his police chief some tough questions.
Sources said Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s direction to the Chief Minister to set up a probe even while letting the party counter the BJP aggressively, painting the ruling party’s fusillade as an attack on “Punjab and Punjabiyat”, perhaps was part of this calibrated approach.
However, Supreme Court has seized of the matter we will have to wait and see what the court decides,” he said. While the Congress insists that there was no security breach, Tewari said “now that the courts will determine”.
The fact of the episode is Farmers have begun fighting back against the BJP in general and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in particular for their attempt to again “malign” the farming community and the whole of Punjab for the “security lapse” in Ferozepur along the Prime Minister’s route for a political rally in the border district.
The farmers have been widely sharing videos showing close-ups of BJP workers near the Prime Minister’s motorcade, pointing out that it was supporters of Modi’s own party who came close to his cavalcade. Yet, farmers protesting a kilometre away were being questioned, they added.
In a statement by the Samyukta Kisan Morcha said: “It is a matter of great regret that to cover up the failure of his rally, the Prime Minister has tried to malign both the state of Punjab and the farmers’ movement by using the pretext of ‘somehow his life was saved.
A Congress leader Udit Raj said in a controversial tweet has claimed that “power-hungry” Prime Minister Narendra Modi had planned the Pulwama terror attack that killed 40 CRPF personnel in 2019. Udit said that PM’s security lapse in Punjab is a “drama” that proves his involvement in planning of Pulwama attack.
He further said on PM’s security breach, he alleged that PM Modi wants to defame Charanjit Singh Channi as he cannot see a Dalit as the Chief Minister and said that when PM goes to Varanasi he stops his convoy to meet people but does not feel threatened then.
The Congress leader comes after Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu also called the PM’s security breach a “drama”. The BJP is doing this to reap political benefits in other poll-bound states and save themselves from humiliation as Modi would have had to address a gathering of 500 people when arrangements for 70,000 were made, Sidhu said.
