LUDHIANA: Senior Congress leader and former Union minister Manish Tewari on Saturday disclosed that there were thousands of Indian youth, a substantive number of them from Punjab are detained in the detention camps along US-Mexico border. He said he had personally visited the border area during his recent US visit and had felt alarmed over the situation there.

Addressing a workers meeting organized by Punjab Congress secretary Satwinder Jawaddi at Ludhiana on Saturday, Tewari said, during his visit he was told that sixty thousand Indians, who had tried to sneak illegally into the US through Mexico had been detained by the US authorities. Of these, over ninety per cent were Punjabis.

Expressing concern over the plight of these stranded youth, he said, while their release has to be dealt at the level of Union external affairs ministry as he had already raised the matter, Punjab also needs to create job avenues for the youth so that they are not forced to look for the hazardous foreign

The former Ludhiana MP also said the countdown of the NDA government had started. “Their despair and frustration was revealed during the Prime Minister’s speech in the parliament during the no-confidence motion”, he said, while remarking, “the NDA may have won the confidence of the house, but it has actually lost the confidence of people across India”. He expressed confidence that after the General Elections it will be a Progressive and secular government in power at the centre.

Among those present on the occasion included Pawan Dewan, Gurmail Pahalwan, Satwinder Jawadi, Manjit Singh Jawadi, Palwinder Singh Taggar, Akshay Bhanot, Sushil Malhotra, Goldy Agnihotri, Vikram Pahalwan, Parminder Singh Latal, Vinod Thapar, Rajat Sood, Inderjeet Kapoor, Kailash Kapoor, Kulwant Singh, Rakesh Sharma, Deepak Hans, Gurcharan Saini, Bittu Dhelewal, Mewa Singh Dhillon, Vinod Gogi, Arun Bector and others.

