Hoshiarpur: Lashing out at all those party leaders who deserted the Congress and defected to the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring today said that there can be no defence against betrayal and all those who had betrayed the party will soon regret their decision.

Addressing a largely attended public meeting here today, after the local leader Sunder Shyam Arora joined the BJP on Saturday, Warring said, he (Arora) had not only betrayed the Congress party, but tens of thousands of workers who had supported him in thick and thin during all these years.

Talking to reporters, the PCC president said these leaders had apparently joined the BJP for protection as their past misdeeds had started haunting them. He agreed that the party should have taken action against such people when reports against them had come. “If our party had acted that time, we would not have faced what we are facing today”, he said.

Earlier addressing the workers, Warring told them that every challenge throws up an opportunity. “People like Arora may have turned out to be rank opportunists, but this has thrown open the opportunity for other deserving people whose progress had been blocked”, he said, while adding, all those who had deserted the party will soon regret their decision as people will never forgive them for this betrayal.

The PCC president told the workers and local leaders that the party will always stand by them and the new leader who will lead them will emerge from the grassroots only. “And you all will choose that leader and not someone sitting in Chandigarh”, he said amidst a thumping applause.

Warring was accompanied by the AICC Secretary Harish Chaudhary, the working president Bharat Bhushan Ashu, Capt Sandeep Sandhu, Dr Raj Kumar Chabbewal, Barinder Dhillon, Sangat Singh Gilzian, Arun Dogra, Indu Bala, Amarpreet Singh Lally and others.