Chandigarh, Feb 18 Just ahead of polling for the 117-member Assembly in Punjab, Congress Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi's remark on migrant workers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar has angered Punjabi diaspora in Canada, who termed it ridiculous, discriminatory, nasty and not endorsing the principle of India 'One Nation'.
Canada's first Indo-Canadian premier Ujjal Dosanjh, who fought for the rights of farm and domestic workers, told over phone that the chief minister's remark is discriminatory and ridiculous.
Dosanjh noted that it is an ugly example of 'suffocating or silencing the people from other regions'.
"It is absolutely ridiculous. India is one country and you should be free to travel and live anywhere in the country," said Punjab-origin Dosanjh, who was sworn in as B.C. premier in February 2000.
A liberal and uniquely moderate Sikh, Dosanjh's journey from his ancestral village of Dosanjh Kalan near Jalandhar began when he was 18 years old and emigrated to England in 1964. Four years later, he moved to Canada, where he pulled lumber in a sawmill for a few years.
He represented Vancouver-Kensington in the B.C. legislature from 1991 to 2001 and represented Vancouver South in Parliament from 2004 to 2011.
Aghast at the political remark back in his home state, Dosanjh told that in 1977 when he was in India then Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee
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