Chandigarh, Nov 9 (PTI) Punjab BJP president Kewal Singh Dhillon on Monday alleged that law and order in the state has completely collapsed under the Aam Aadmi Party rule, saying that the government is making “shameless attempts to conceal this grim reality”.
Dhillon was responding to Punjab Finance Minister Cheema’s remarks that the Bhagwant Mann government has initiated action against fugitive gangsters ever since it came to power.
The state BJP chief lambasted Cheema for taking credit for the arrest and international extradition of fugitives, saying it was being done by central agencies, including the Ministry of External Affairs, CBI, and Interpol.
He claimed that Cheema was “ beating drums to claim party credit for actions carried out by central agencies and Indian diplomatic missions, while deliberately turning a blind eye to the horrifying ground reality in Punjab”.
“The law and order situation in Punjab has completely collapsed, and the state government is making shameless attempts to conceal this grim reality,” Dhillon alleged in a statement.
“The AAP government and the Home Minister, a portfolio held by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, are entirely responsible for this. The AAP government has completely failed to protect innocent lives and must be held accountable,” he added.
Citing the murder of anti-drug crusader Parvinder Singh Jhota in Mansa last month, Dhillon claimed that the broad-daylight killing exposed the complicity of the AAP government.
“In the AAP government’s ‘badlav’, drug cartels, gangsters, and extortionists operate with complete impunity, while anti-drug warriors like Parvinder Jhota have to pay with their lives,” he said.
The state BJP president alleged that under the AAP regime, Punjab’s jails have turned into five-star operational headquarters for extortionists and gang bosses, from where “they run criminal syndicates”.
The BJP demanded that “instead of deflecting blame onto others” and taking false credit, the AAP government should answer to the people of Punjab why traders, doctors, and ordinary citizens are living under constant terror, “and why it has given free rein to the drug-gangster nexus to suffocate the state”.
Speaking to reporters here earlier in the day, Cheema claimed that Punjab Police brought back 17 gangsters from foreign countries in just six months, adding that the previous governments failed to achieve this in decades.
Cheema said that the latest breakthrough was the deportation of Gurwinder Singh alias Afridi from Ethiopia, who carried a Rs 5 lakh reward and faces over 30 criminal cases.
Cheema took on the BJP on the gangster issue, alleging it has “nurtured” gangsters and has kept gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, who is lodged in a jail in Gujarat, like a “state guest”.
“Wherever the BJP is in power, it has nurtured gangsters. The objective is to send these gangsters in states governed by the opposition to disrupt law and order,” the AAP leader alleged.
Referring to Bishnoi, Cheema said the entire country is aware of the individual “currently held in Gujarat’s Sabarmati Jail, who is being used to issue constant threats, thereby intimidating and terrorising opposition-ruled states”.
“Lawrence Bishnoi has been kept like a state guest by the BJP,” he alleged. PTI SUN KSI
KSI
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