CHANDIGARH

Shiromani Akali Dal lawmaker Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Tuesday focused Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann throughout a debate within the Lok Sabha on the difficulty of drug abuse. Several phrases and features from her speech had been expunged by the Chair later.

“Alcohol is nothing but an addiction. And I am trying to say how addiction is affecting people,” said former Union minister Badal, who initiated the debate on the problem of drug abuse and the steps taken by the government. “If the chief minister is like this then you can imagine what the condition of the state will be.”

She additionally claimed that the “lawmakers who used to take a seat subsequent to Mann needed to vary their seats”. Mann was the only member of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Lok Sabha, which currently has no representative from the AAP.

The MP from Bathinda also claimed that the Punjab chief minister had to be deboarded from a Lufthansa flight a few months ago. The German airline, however, had later said that its flight was delayed due to an “plane change”.

Stating that the law-and-order situation in Punjab was deteriorating, Badal claimed that “medicine had even entered faculties”. “No one feels safe here. People are leaving the state (Punjab) and going abroad because of the drug menace,” she alleged.

AAP spokesperson in Punjab didn’t reply to a number of requires a remark.