Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi had a crushing retort to Arvind Kejriwal’s claims of victory for his Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab.
Citing a series of wrong predictions by the Delhi Chief Minister, Mr Channi tweeted, “My political assessment — Arvind Kejriwal Ji should stop making political assessments”.
What set it off was a tweet by Mr Kejriwal predicting again that Mr Channi is going to lose from both seats he is contesting — Bhadaur and Chamkaur Sahib.
“I was just in Dhuri. Channi Sahib, Bhagwant (Mann) is winning from Dhuri by at least 51,000 votes. And you are losing both the seats,” Mr Kejrwal’s tweet read.
Mr Mann, AAP’s Chief Ministerial candidate, is contesting from the set in south Punjab. Last month he had challenged the Chief Minister to a straight contest from the seat.
Mr Channi had not responded. But today, he slammed the AAP chief, tweeting, “Kejriwal ji, you have told at least 51,000 lies. As in 2017, these remarks of yours will be proved wrong again”.
Then he tweeted the collage of Mr Kejriwal’s predictions, which included a defeat for Narendra Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat, from Varanasi in 2014.
Mr Kejriwal, who had contested against him and lost heavily, had tweeted on March 26, weeks before the election, “My political assessment after days in Varanasi — Modi ji is losing Varanasi. He shud therefore concentrate on vadodara”.
Mr Kejrwial’s other big misses included AAP winning “six to seven” Lok Sabha seats in Delhi that year, and Amarinder Singh losing both seats in the 2017 state elections in Punjab.
His tweet from 2019, predicting five of Delhi’s seven parliamentary seats going to AAP, had also found a spot in Mr Channi’s collage.
Mr Kejriwal’s AAP has emerged as the big challenger for Punjab’s ruling Congress government in the state elections that will be held this week.
On Sunday, the Delhi Chief Minister had claimed that his party has conducted a telepoll on the seats Mr Channi is contesting. “We have conducted a survey thrice, Channi Saheb is losing from both seats,” he had said.
In the 2017 election, AAP had won 20 seats, emerging a distant second to the Congress, which won 77 of the state’s 117 seats. The election will be held on February 20 and the counting of votes is on March 10.
