Former Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Tuesday expressed grave concern over the situation in the State saying that it has been fast slipping towards complete and dangerous anarchy.
“In less than nine months, they have ruined the hard-earned atmosphere of peace and communal harmony...It is jungle raj here with lawless elements free to take law into their own hands,” he said.
Badal said the “political assassinations and communal murders are pushing the state towards the edge of a dangerous precipice” while describing the situation as “extremely dangerous.
He appealed to the people to maintain peace at all costs and not to allow the age-old bonds between brotherly communities to be disturbed.
Badal said the main reason for this drastic deterioration in the situation was that peace and communal harmony do not even figure among the priorities of the Government which has resulted in a complete collapse of administration with peace and communal harmony being the worst casualties.
Strongly condemning the assassination of Vipan Sharma in Amritsar and husband of Akali Sarpanch Harkirat Singh, a day before and assault on senior Akali leader’s son Amarjot Singh Babbehali on Tuesday besides other recent incidents of violence in the state, Badal described these as links in the long chain of bitterness and violence unleashed by the present regime.
He said maintenance of peace and preserving communal harmony require a combination of political will and administrative determination. Both seem conspicuous by their absence in Punjab today, he added. “During my tenure as Chief Minister, I began and ended every day in office by keeping a close watch on threats to peace and communal harmony and reaffirming my government’s commitment to these sacred ideals,” said Badal.
“But in the last nine months, I have not heard of a single occasion when the political leadership and the top civil and police administration in the state got together to review the situation in this regard,” he said while expressing deep concern over the spate of communally inspired incidents saying that these posed a serious threat to peace in the state.