‘What a shame’: Swati Maliwal accuses Bhagwant Mann of arriving ‘drunk’ in Punjab assembly | India News
New Delhi: BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Swati Maliwal was accused on Friday Chief Minister of Punjab god value of “drunk” arrivals in the legislature.In a social media post on X, Maliwal shared a clip of him addressing the rally and said that Mann should undergo an “alcohol test” and be removed from the post of chief minister if found guilty.“Today again, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann arrived at the ‘Temple of Democracy’ Punjab Assembly, allegedly under the influence of alcohol. This man went to gurudwara drunk, went to temple drunk, came to Lok Sabha drunk, attended government meetings drunk, even drank so much abroad that he was kicked off the plane,” said Maliwal.“Before the election, he put his hand on his mother’s head and promised that he would never drink again. The Chief Minister of a sensitive border state like Punjab is always drunk… signing files while drunk. What a shame,” he added.“A person who abstains from alcohol only when he sleeps – how will he run Punjab? CM Mann should be tested for alcohol and removed from the post of Chief Minister if found guilty,” he added.This comes days after Swati Maliwal, along with Raghav Chadha and five other Rajya Sabha members from the Aam Aadmi Party, decided to resign and merge their party with the Bharatiya Janata Party.Reacting to the controversy, Leader of Opposition Pratap Singh Bajwa demanded immediate alco-meter and dope tests of Mann and all MLAs during the ongoing session of the Punjab Assembly.Elected an RS MP in January 2024, Maliwal’s fallout with the party began only a few months later, in May, when he alleged that he was physically assaulted by a close aide of AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal at the latter’s home – a claim he repeated after his exit.This is not the first time that the standard has faced controversy. In 2022, the opposition targeted the Punjab chief minister and alleged that he was offloaded from a Delhi-bound flight at Frankfurt airport because he was “drunk”, a charge the ruling AAP denied as baseless.
