Amidst the politics hearing up on his appeal to the protesting farmers to “shift dharnas to Delhi from Punjab”, Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Wednesday said that no Akali leader, especially former Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal, had the moral right to speak on the crisis triggered by the farm laws, which they could easily have averted when they were part of the Central Government and party to each of its anti-people decisions.

Capt Amarinder, in a hard-hitting response to Harsimrat’s “irresponsible” claims and “baseless” allegations against him with reference to his statement on the impact of the prolonged farmers’ stir in Punjab on the state’s economy, slammed the Akali leader over her “politically motivated” remarks which were nothing but a cover-up of her and her party’s failure to prevent the crisis that was of their own deliberate making.

Ridiculing the former Union Minister’s remarks that he (Captain Amarinder) was speaking the language of the BJP leadership and the Prime Minister, the Chief Minister said that left to the ruling party at the Centre and in neighbouring Haryana, the farmers would not have even reached the Delhi borders to make their voice heard.

“I never asked the farmers to go to Delhi. They were forced to leave their homes and sit at the border of the national capital, facing the elements and even losing their lives, as a result of your coalition government’s acts of commission and omission,” he said, asking Harsimrat to stop lying about her brazen complicity in the imposition of the farm laws on the farmers, not just of Punjab but the entire country.

Dubbing as atrocious Harsimrat’s suggestion that the farmers should protest in Punjab while their fight was against the BJP-led Government at the Centre, the Chief Minister quipped “It’s like asking someone to go to the western front to fight an enemy that is standing at the eastern border.”