‘Bunch of fake revolutionaries': Arora under Oppn fire for ‘not knowing Shaheed Kartar Singh Sarabha'
AAP had organized a public meeting Saturday in Ludhiana's Sarabha Nagar, an upscale residential cum commercial hub named after the Ghadar revolutionary. The shopkeepers in the colony have been demanding for a long time that their market should also be renamed after Shaheed Kartar Singh Sarabha. The meeting was also attended by CM Bhagwant Mann.
However, in major embarrassment for AAP, Arora, during his address, failed to name the late revolutionary who was hanged by the British when he was just 19. Sarabha was the idol of Bhagat Singh.
During the address, a video of which went viral on social media, Arora: 'People are demanding that the market here should be named after Shaheed Sarabha Singh..' As he fails to recall the full name and looks at others for cue, he is corrected and told that the name is Shaheed Kartar Singh Sarabha.
Arora says: 'I am sure CM saab will announce it soon and Sarabha's statue has already been ordered. It will be installed soon.'
Launching a scathing attack on Mann and Arora, Congress's senior MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira wrote on X: 'I stand vindicated on my charge that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is a bunch of fake revolutionaries! Below AAP candidate for Ludhiana bypoll Sanjeev Arora doesn't know who Shaheed Kartar Singh Sarabha is! Leaders like Arvind Kejriwal and Bhagwant Mann are only misusing the names of our martyrs and have nothing to do with their ideology.'
Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) also launched an attack on Arora.
'In the presence of Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann and the entire high command, Sanjeev Arora's disrespect towards Shaheed Kartar Singh Sarabha during his election campaign is extremely shameful and condemnable,' said Harjinder Singh Bobby Garcha, president, Shaheed Kartar Singh Sarabha Foundation and chief spokesperson, SAD.
'A candidate brought in by AAP from Gurgaon has insulted our martyr… Arora did not even remember the name of Shaheed Kartar Singh Sarabha. Someone who doesn't even know the names of our martyrs cannot safeguard their legacy. How can such a person work for the welfare of Punjab and Punjabi culture?,' said Garcha.
He warned that if Arora does not apologize soon, the Shaheed Kartar Singh Sarabha Foundation will not only oppose the election campaign but will also stage a protest against him.
Garcha stated that they want to inform the city residents and the people of the state that 'AAP has brought in outsiders who have no knowledge of Punjab's culture or martyrs, and they don't even understand our Punjabi heritage'.
'Instead, the Aam Aadmi Party has fielded candidates in Punjab's electoral arena who mock Punjab and Punjabi culture, and it is essential to expose their true nature,' said Garcha.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hindu
11 minutes ago
- The Hindu
Life of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay on NIF Prize longlist
In her review of Nico Slate's biography of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Urvashi Butalia says the writer's attempt to define what 'freedom' meant to the fierce nationalist and socialist is commendable. For Chattopadhyay, it was 'not just the freeing of India from the shackles of the British, but the freeing of India from itself, from the many hierarchies it carried within, from the inequalities that were rife, from the patriarchies that were deep,' writes Butalia. Hierarchies, inequalities, patriarchies still run deep in India of the 21st century. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay — The Art of Freedom (HarperCollins) is one of the 10 books on the longlist of one of the country's foremost non-fiction prizes which bears her name. The other books on the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize longlist for 2025 also 'deepen our understanding of India's recent past and present' as member of the jury Niraja Gopal Jayal put it. Here's the list:Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva(Princeton University Press) by Janaki Bakhle; Iru: The Remarkable Life of Irawati Karve (Speaking Tiger Books) by Urmilla Deshpande, Thiago Pinto Barbosa; India's Near East: A New History(Penguin) by Avinash Paliwal; Gods, Guns, and Missionaries: The Making Of The Modern Hindu Identity(Penguin) by Manu S. Pillai; Iconoclast: A Reflective Biography of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar(Penguin) by Anand Teltumbde; The Gujaratis: A Portrait of a Community(Aleph) by Salil Tripathi; India's Forgotten Country: A View From the Margins(Penguin) by Bela Bhatia;Engineering a Nation: The Life and Career of M. Visvesvaraya(Penguin) by Aparajith Ramnath; andThe Backstage of Democracy: India's Election Campaigns and the People Who Manage Them(Cambridge University Press) by Amogh Dhar Sharma. The shortlist will be announced in October and the winner on December 6.
The Hindu
an hour ago
- The Hindu
Madras Day 2025: On Madras dealing with the Chinese
Towards the end of July this year, at the AGM of the Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the country's second oldest trade body and founded in 1836, Vellayan Subbiah of Murugappa Group addressed the audience. He spoke on how China has developed in the last few decades and how much India has to catch up if it intended to be serious competition. Also Read: Tamil Nadu's oldest and India's second trade body still puts up a fight for industry Listening to it brought to mind the decades of unease that has existed in the relationship between the two countries. But far older to that, of course, is China's interaction with south India. When a few years ago Prime Minister Narendra Modi made Mamallapuram his location of choice for his summit with Xi Jinping, the paramount leader of China, he was perhaps trying to re-establish a relationship of healthy exchange that had once existed. The accounts invariably begin with Bodhidharma, the 6th Century CE south Indian (as per one version), who travelled to China, met the Emperor Wudi, counselled him, and then stayed on in that country. The legend of Bodhidharma, and it has to be qualified as that, if correct in terms of date and location, makes him a contemporary of the Pallavas. Since then, and especially after the release of the film 7am Arivu, Bodhidharma has grown in stature and has been passed off as fact. The problem there is lack of documentation. But we do have better records of another who made the journey in reverse order —Xuanzang. He travelled to India in the 7th century CE and, incredibly, made it back safely to China as well. During his sojourn in India, he came to Kanchi too. Trade with China was another matter altogether. It had probably existed from time immemorial and, certainly, we do know that trade relations existed during Pallava and Chola times. Rajaraja and later Kulothunga I sent trade delegations to that country with a view to boost business. During colonial times, the East India Company, while it made over most Asian trade to its servants, jealously guarded its rights over China. Madras was the point of entry for most Chinese goods, which included copper, quicksilver, sugar (still known as Chini), and zinc. The last named was known then as tutenag in Europe, and even today, the word thuthanagam is prevalent as a term for anodising in Tamil. Circulation of fake currency Once in a while, the Chinese would show their true colours — a famed incident in the 18th Century CE was their dumping on us fake pagodas, the currency then in use in Madras, with a far lower gold content. It gave the Company quite a headache to sort that out. But an indicator of a future history of conflict was the Opium War, fought between the British and the Chinese in the 1840s, which ended in the ceding of Hong Kong. Soldiers from Madras, comprising infantry regiments, sappers, and miners, were employed by the British in Canton, Nanking, and other places. China Bazaar in Madras is still an abiding name. And though it may have derived from porcelain alias 'china' being sold here, it is intriguing that Chinese dentists settled here from the 1930s onwards and some continue their practice. They have very little to do with China itself and a point to ponder is that during the Chinese aggression of 1962, they contributed to the Indian War Fund! In more recent years, Sino-Indian border conflicts have dominated the news. But a Chennai-based engineering company did the unthinkable — it became the first such entity from India to set up a manufacturing plant in China! Sundram Fasteners (Zhejiang) Limited began operations in 2004 and continues to flourish. It just goes to show that conflicts will happen, kingdoms and governments will rise and fall, but trade is eternal.
Hindustan Times
2 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Punjab: Over 500 detained as BJP outreach camp row snowballs
Chandigarh/Jalandhar/Bathinda: The row over Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) outreach programme in Punjab escalated on Thursday, with police detaining nearly 500 saffron party leaders and workers to thwart their plan to hold 'awareness camps' at 39 places in the state. The row over Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) outreach programme in Punjab escalated on Thursday, with police detaining nearly 500 saffron party leaders and workers to thwart their plan to hold 'awareness camps' at 39 places in the state. While the BJP claimed that these camps are being held to ensure that the benefits of the central schemes, including Ayushman Bharat and Kisan Samman Nidhi and others, reach people in the state, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government maintained they have credible reports that certain private operators, allegedly on behalf of the BJP, are illegally collecting personal data of local residents in the name of government schemes. Separately, a delegation of Punjab BJP met Governor Gulab Chand Kataria and sought his intervention over the state government 'forcibly halting' their camps. The BJP also alleged that several party leaders, including former Union minister Preneet Kaur, former MLA KD Bhandari, former MP Sushil Rinku, former MLA Harjot Kamal were detained by police from various such camps in the state on Thursday. Jakhar dares CM to arrest him BJP's state president Sunil Jakhar alleged that the AAP government was not doing anything for the poor and is obstructing people from receiving the benefits of central government schemes. Jakhar said the BJP will once again set up a camp on August 22 at Raipur village in Fazilka district from where police arrested party leaders on Thursday. 'I will be present at the camp and I challenge chief minister Bhagwant Singh Mann and his police to arrest me,' said Jakhar. Addressing the media after meeting the governor, Punjab BJP working president Ashwani Sharma alleged that the AAP government is 'misusing' Punjab Police to stop the awareness camps. ' These camps are part of the party's outreach programme 'BJP De Sewadar, Aa Gaye Tuhade Dwar' to ensure that the poor, the scheduled caste community, farmers, youth and women get the benefits of public welfare schemes of the Narendra Modi government at the Centre,' said Sharma. 'Our workers have just acted as a bridge by telling the poor about the camps and availing the benefits of the central government schemes,' he said. The AAP, however, termed the camps as 'illegal' and inappropriate. 'BJP workers are misleading the people and collecting their data under the pretext of offering benefits. This data is likely to be misused. The exercise must stop immediately,' said AAP leader and former minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal. Perneet, Rinku, Bhandari among those detained The BJP said the police detained its leaders and workers at 28 places in the state. Jalandhar rural police detained ex-minister Bhandari from Shahkot and former MP Rinku from Adampur. Rinku was arrested while he was holding the camp and was live on social media platforms. In Hoshiarpur, BJP leader Nimisha Mehta was detained from Garhshankar and Mukerian MLA Jangi Lal Mahajan and Mukerian district president Ajay Kaushal from Mukerian were also taken into custody but were let off in the evening. BJP workers gathered outside police stations and raised slogans against the government. Senior BJP leader Vijay Sampla termed the police action as 'anti-people' and 'dictatorial'. 'This act of the AAP government has not only deprived the people of Punjab of benefit of welfare schemes, information and guidance, but has also exposed the anti-development mindset of the chief minister Bhagwant Mann-led government,' Sampla alleged. Former Union Minister and senior BJP leader Preneet Kaur alleged that BJP workers and villagers were manhandled by Punjab Police at Masingan, Sanaur, where they were peacefully organising an awareness camp. 'Instead of fighting crime and drugs, the government is misusing police as a political tool to intimidate villagers and BJP workers. This is not governance—it is vendetta politics,' alleged Preneet, adding that BJP camps have been disrupted across Punjab. In Fazilka, party's district president Sukhwinder Singh Kaka Kamboj, and leader Vandana Sangwan were arrested from Raipur village in the Balluana assembly constituency. Several BJP leaders were also detained in south Malwa districts. State general secretary of the BJP Dyal Singh Sodhi said many BJP leaders from Bathinda rural unit were taken to the Sadar police station. Mansa's district president Goma Ram was also prevented from holding a camp, Sodhi added. In Muktsar, BJP state executive member Pritpal Sharma was detained during a camp being organised at Sukhna Ablu village in the Gidderbaha assembly segment. Former finance minister and senior BJP leader Manpeet Badal held a protest in Gidderbaha against detention of BJP leaders. Manpreet rubbished the state government's claims that outreach camps would lead to data breach or compromise the personal details of individuals. 'The BJP will continue to hold such public camps,' he added. Three BJP leaders were detained in Barnala district during a party outreach program in Tapa. A protest was held at the Rureke police station where the leaders were kept. In Batala, BJP leaders and workers were stopped from holding a camp at a village in Fatehgarh Churian town. BJP leader Ravikaran Singh Kahlon was to address the camp but he was not allowed to do so. 'We are not indulging in any illegal activity, why are the cops not allowing us to organise the camp,' he said. The police said BJP leaders had not taken permission to hold the camp. BJP cries 'deliberate harassment' In a memorandum submitted to the governor, the BJP delegation alleged that there was 'deliberate harassment' being inflicted upon the party workers, volunteers, and the innocent inhabitants of several villages across Punjab, where awareness camps have been initiated to spread vital information about the central government welfare schemes. 'I want to ask Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann to fight a political battle. Why are you getting scared of the BJP?' Don't you want the poor to get benefits of the central schemes,' Ashwani Sharma said. Responding to some allegations, he asserted that there was no question of any data theft in these camps. 'In almost every camp, the state police and local administration have intervened to stop BJP workers and volunteers from providing information. This disruption is being justified on two pretexts--that prior permission from the deputy commissioner/SDM is required, and that parties are allegedly collecting personal data of the inhabitants,' it said. 'No such permission is mandated under any law for awareness programmes of this nature, and the allegation regarding data collection is false, baseless, and politically motivated. Further the volunteers and workers engaged in these camps hold valid Common Service Centre (CSC) IDs. Hence, there is no illegality in the conduct of such programmes,' it said. The allegation regarding data collection is false, baseless, and politically motivated, it said. The BJP delegation urged the governor to direct the Punjab government to immediately desist from 'harassing' BJP workers, volunteers, and local inhabitants who are voluntarily participating in these awareness programmes. Saffron party's true face exposed: AAP Lashing out at the BJP, AAP spokesperson Neel Garg said these camps have 'exposed the true face of the saffron party.' It is the state government's responsibility, not of any political party, to implement the central government's schemes. All such welfare schemes are already being implemented effectively in Punjab,' Garg said. He warned people against sharing their personal information with anyone, citing the risk of fraud, and stated that the AAP does not prevent anyone from conducting their party activities. However, he firmly asserted that no one will be allowed to collect private data from the public illegally. Garg added that numerous complaints had been received regarding such unauthorised data collection, and the BJP had not organised these camps in areas governed by their own party. He described the BJP's protest as mere political theatrics aimed at creating a false narrative. Pure gimmick: Warring on outreach camps Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring dubbed the BJP's outreach programme as pure political gimmick. 'The Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab was helping the BJP with the 'oxygen of publicity' with a so called police 'crackdown'. Otherwise, nobody would even have noticed the BJP's outreach programme,' he claimed. 'The AAP and BJP have a symbiotic relationship. The AAP is trying to support and strengthen the BJP in the hope that it can challenge the Congress', he alleged, adding that both parties stand exposed before the people of Punjab. With inputs from HTC Patiala, Sangrur, Amritsar
