On the ground, it is the most securely guarded place here. Several levels of heavily armed troopers ring it at all the time. But a sense of “insecurity” now prevails in the Punjab and Haryana Secretariat complex after a central security agency threatened to withdraw if its outstanding of a whopping Rs45 crore is not cleared by the state governments.
The Secretariat complex in Chandigarh’s Sector 1 is guarded by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF). Chandigarh, a 114 square-km union territory, has been the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana since 1966. The seat of power of the Punjab and Haryana governments, the Secretariat complex was designed by Chandigarh’s founder-architect le Corbusier in the 1950s. The then Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, who was credited for wiping out terrorism from the state with supercop KPS Gill in the early 1990s, was assassinated in the Secretariat complex by a human bomb Aug 31, 1995.
“The Rs45 crore bill raised by the CISF includes service tax and advance security deposit for three months. The state governments should bear the cost of having such a high level of security,” a CISF officer told IANS here. The CISF communication said Haryana owed it Rs23 crore while Punjab’s outstanding was Rs22 crore. The Punjab government has claimed that the central government owes it nearly Rs15 crore for Punjab Police security provided to central government establishments and buildings in Chandigarh. It said the CISF’s outstanding bill can be adjusted against this amount.
The Haryana government has however objected to the hefty bill. Haryana’s Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Samir Mathur, in a communication to the CISF director general, asked the force to reconcile its accounts and the outstanding amount demanded from Haryana. “The CISF is a central armed police force and... it is providing safety and protection to the functioning of democratically elected governments under the Constitution,” Mathur said in his communication.