DW BUREAU / chandigarh Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president and former Deputy Chief Minister Sardar Sukhbir Singh Badal today described the Punjab govt decision to confine the forthcoming Vidhan Sabha session to just a single day as "the clearest evidence of the present government's acknowledgement that they have lost the mandate to govern and are scared even to show their faces to the people's representatives. This is a cowardly admission of defeat even before the start of the session," said Badal in a statement here. Badal said that the decision to reduce the session to a one-day wonder was the outcome of the democratic pressure exerted by the SAD on people's issues. "We have driven them up against the wall by aggressively exposing their anti-people policies and decisions. The Congress govt is reeling under the impact of our onslaught." The Akali leader said that in the past almost four years, the Chief Minister and his colleagues have remained "completely quarantined" with police cordoning them in from the people and the SAD. "But the police will not be there to protect them against our democratic fight on behalf of the people inside the Vidhan Sabha. So they have decided to simply run away instead of facing us." The former Deputy CM said that even the one-day session is the result only of the constitutional compulsion which the Congress govt cannot evade. "There are numerous urgent issues such as the Corona going out of control in Punjab, the unprecedented loss of precious lives in hooch tragedy, farmers' and farm labour's crisis including the cleverly-floated Montek Ahluwalia report to prepare the ground for ending free power to farmers and do injustice to state govt employees, the non-payment of DA, the open loot through liquor scam, the massive land mining with goonda tax, the seed scandal, etc. On all these issues, the government is clearly afraid of the people and of the SAD in view of the pressure exerted by us in public domain." In a statement, SAD legislative party leader Sharanjit Singh Dhillon said the decision to hold a one day session, which would be held for the first time in the history of the State, was a cruel joke on the people who wanted the government to give answers for the loot of the State exchequer as well as the loss of more than 130 lives in the recent hooch tragedy. "The government thinks it can muzzle the voice of the people with such measures but Punjabis will not remain silent and will protest against this anti-people decision tooth and nail." Stating that the government would have to explain its failures and make amends, Mr Sharanjit Dhillon said the government was yet to disclose why it was not taking any action against its own leaders as well as distilleries and liquor mafia which had caused a loss of Rs 5,600 crore to the State exchequer. He said this was not all. (editor@dailyworld.in)