Chandigarh, November 4: The Leader of Opposition Sukhpal Singh Khaira in a statement released today, warned the Captain Amarinder Singh government not to enact PCOCA, as it is bound to be misused by the police and political hierarchy of the state to settle scores with their opponents.
Khaira said a strong will power is required to control law and order in Punjab and not a draconian act like PCOCA. Khaira stated that Captain Amarinder Singh government is lacking will power as evident from series of political murders that have rocked Punjab. The Punjab police has miserably failed to trace or crack even one political murder during the last couple of years.
Captain Amarinder Singh is only trying to pass on the buck of his failures sometimes to NIA and now by proposing to enact the tyrannical PCOCA. Punjab has witnessed gross misuse of such ruthless acts enacted earlier in the name of law and order, where the police and the political dispensation targeted their opponents with impunity. Khaira said TADA was one such law enacted to control militancy but it did more damage to the citizens than eradicating terrorism from Punjab.
Khaira said that the common man was already suffering from misuse of various acts like the SC/ST Act, the Dowry Act and the NDPS Act. Although, the said acts were created with a good intention to ensure justice to the aggrieved but it has been noticed that the laws are being vindictively misused many times, to settle scores with the opposition at various levels.
Khaira said a full-time Home Minister was the need of the hour as Captain Amarinder Singh is spending most of the time holidaying in the hills, making visits to Delhi, Mumbai and even overseas. To prove his point Khaira said Captain Amarinder Singh visited his home town of Patiala yesterday, after a long period of 7 months.
Khaira elaborated that approximately 4,000 aggrieved people of Punjab have knocked at the doors of Justice Mehtab Singh Gill Commission, formed to look into cases of vendetta during last 10 years. Such huge number of complaints reaching the Gill Commission only prove that the police has been working wrongly and unfairly to inflict vendetta that continues unabated even now, said Khaira.
The need of the hour, he said, was to bring about a perceptive change in the attitude of government, to be fair and impartial. Khaira said, his party would oppose tooth and nail any such draconian law in the ensuing session of Punjab Vidhan Sabha.
