WARRING LEADS HUNDREDS OF CONGRESSMEN TO SHOW BLACK FLAGS TO CM MANN IN ZIRA

PROTEST WAS IN SOLIDARITY WITH MOHANJIT WHO WAS BRUTALIZED BY POLICE FOR SIMILAR PROTEST,  STOPPED ON THE WAY TO VENUE BY HUGE POLICE CONTINGENT,  CONDEMNS MANN FOR MAINSTREAMING GANGSTERISM IN POLITICS

Vikram Ditya Sharma/Zira (Ferozepore)

September 6: Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring accompanied by hundreds of party workers including former MLA Kulbir Zira today marched towards the Chief Minister Bhagwat Mann, with black flags and black bands tied around their turbans, to express solidarity with Mohanjit Sheron, who was brutalized by police for a similar protest a few days ago.

Raising slogans against the Chief Minister and the Punjab Police, Warring and other Congress workers tried to march towards the venue where Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann was supposed to induct a gangster into the Aam Aadmi Party.
Warring said, after meeting Mohanjit yesterday, he had announced that now onwards, wherever the Chief Minister will go he will be greeted with black flag protests everywhere by the Congress workers. He said, today marked the first day of the protests and he decided to lead the protest personally.

The police had erected barricades, with hundreds of cops deployed on the way to prevent the Congress workers from reaching the venue of the Chief Minister’s programme.

The PCC president said that Bhagwant Mann had forgotten all democratic principles and that is why his police had run amok over a peaceful and symbolic protest by a youth. He pointed out, Mann was not the first Chief Minister who was shown the black flags. He said, Chief Ministers in the past and even the Prime Ministers and Presidents have been shown black flags, but nobody reacted the way Mann did.

He dared Mann and the Punjab Police to register as many cases as they can after the Congress staged the black-flag protests against the Chief Minister today. He said, these protests will continue wherever Mann goes, whose days as the Chief Minister, he added, are in any case numbered as his countdown has begun.

During the protests, Warring asked the workers to exercise restraint and not to confront the police. He said they were doing their duty and added that their fight was with the Chief Minister Mann and some of his sycophants in uniform who were abusing power and brutalizing people like Mohanjit to please Mann.

The PCC president also condemned the induction of a gangster into the AAP by Mann. He said, the AAP was setting a dangerous precedent by inducting a criminal and a gangster into the party and even planning to field him in the ensuing elections from Zira. “What message are you going to convey with this?” he asked the Chief Minister, while warning him, “don’t incentivize gangster culture”.

He said, it can set a dangerous trend of gangsters first resorting to crime, intimidating people, extorting money and then joining politics to wash off all their sins and crimes. He expressed confidence that people of Zira will never accept and elect such a person to the Vidhan Sabha.