Chandigarh, September 21
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Punjab senior leader and MLA Aman Arora said yet another incident of kidnapping and ransom of a youth in Hoshiarpur has made it clear that law and order is a big challenge before the newly appointed Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi; because in the last four-and-a-half-years, more than 7,000 such incidents have been registered. In a statement issued from the party headquarters here on Tuesday, Aman Arora said that heinous crimes like kidnapping and demanding ransom are increasing day by day in Punjab on the lines of Bihar and UP.
He said the Hoshiarpur incident has shown the truth of Punjab to Chief Minister Channi. “Therefore, it is an appeal to the newly appointed Chief Minister to entrust the responsibility of the Ministry of Home Affairs to a competent minister to crack down on crime and criminals and a competent officer should be appointed as the DGP of the state,” said Arora. He said the law and order situation in Punjab has gone from bad to worse during the 10 years rule of the Badal government and in the last four-and-a-half-years of the Captain government.
“Because Sukhbir Singh Badal first kept the Home Ministry with himself but kept his full attention in looting Punjab and running the mafia rule. Then Captain was the Chief Minister for four-and-a-half-years, but he too did not come out of the farmhouse. If the security of Punjab and its people was on the agenda of these Home Ministers, then the law and order situation in the state would not have been so dilapidated,” said Aman Arora. He said the way there was direct political interference from bottom to top during the four-and-a-half-years of the Congress on the lines of the Badal government, it did not allow the police-administration to work according to the law. Earlier the Akali ‘jathedars’ used to keep the police stations on contracts and on the same lines, the Congressmen also kept the police stations on contracts, he added.
The AAP leader further said due to this, the morale of the police completely dropped and the spirits of the criminals got raised. Due to these reasons, heinous crimes increase in Punjab. “Today the law and order situation in Punjab is worse than in UP-Bihar and the Badal-BJP and the Congress are fully responsible for this,” said Arora. He said in the last four-and-a-half-years, 7,139 kidnapping incidents have been executed in Punjab. According to police records, there have been 1,446 kidnappings in the year 2017, 1,597 in the year 2018, 1,790 in the year 2019, 1,395 in the year 2020, and 910 in the year 2021 till June 30. Dozens of these incidents also involved demanding ransom. But those who do not reach the police for the safety of their lives and settle outside by paying ransom; they are not counted at present.
Aman Arora said the dominance of criminals was so much that common people were scared. Therefore, Chief Minister Channi should give priority to strengthening law and order, so that the people can come out from the shadow of fear. He claimed that if with strong political will, the police is allowed to act according to the law; the criminal system can be brought under control in just a week, provided political interference is eliminated. Arora demanded that the time has also come to review the unnecessary police protection given to ministers and officials. “Due to this, the number of policemen in the field has reduced. This puts an additional burden of duty on the remaining policemen. As a result, it directly affects the security of the people of Punjab,” he asserted.
