"Problems of Punjab and leaders in fray "

"Problems of Punjab and leaders in fray "

Work done in their public lives by these leaders belonging to different parties needs to be inspected before making any sense from the rhetoric they are saying in their different gatherings to lure the voters of Punjab for coming elections. There are so many basic problems in existing administrative systems in Punjab which needs reforms. The fundamental defect is in working of police department. Right now they work to implement the propaganda of political parties in power . Whether it was Congress Party in power in 90s and killed hundreds of thousands of Sikh youth in Punjab under the propaganda of militancy or now under Akali party rule, police work to register cases of sedition or drug charges or rape or stoping govt official from performing their duties , just to appease the ruling party in power . They do not follow the spirit of law but misuse it to work against the spirit of the law to make political bosses happy. Current leaders of Congress and Akali Dal did that in their respective regimes. AAP is asking the same authority in Delhi , even though they blame BJP in center for using police against AAP govt in Delhi . But they are not asking independency of police dept but asking it to bring it under their govt so that they can use it like other parties. The argument for the current system is that people elect candidates to power, hence police should work under govt in power to be fair to democracy. But this argument has failed miserably in last at least 40 years in Punjab when police is being used to oppress the political opponents even at the level of using it for criminal purposes. Vendetta politics make common citizens as targets more frequently rather than big leaders. So common citizen suffers and system stays same even though govts change. Police reform in the form of independent Police dept from the clutches of ruling parties and electing police chief by constituents of the area belonging to police station . Smaller constituencies make people more powerful and then provisions of recall elections can make this police dept quite fair for delivering justice to common citizens. This is one way to make political parties act fairly to their opponents also and misuse of law can be minimized to make it negligible . So bring those leaders forward who propose real reforms for safety of common citizen and safety of real democracy too .

Baljinder Singh jasgur@hotmail.com