Chandigarh, December 11
Two district police chiefs in Punjab faced unceremonious exit within a month. While one was suspended by the Election Commission of India another had to go on forced leave. Both of them had to face it because of their role in the elections.
It is a widely acknowledged fact that successive elected governments across the country have been using the police to serve their political purpose as also against their political opponents. The Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab, despite the claims of providing an ideal government, also fell badly to the same temptation. Rather it has gone many steps ahead in using and utilizing police services for its advantage, particularly during the elections and against its political opponents.
Former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh during the 2007-12 Akali-BJP regime once carried a few sacks containing the copies of the false FIRs, that he claimed the Akali-BJP government had registered against the Congress workers, to Delhi to show to the media. That time it was the only bipolar polity in Punjab consisting of the Congress on one side and the Akali-BJP alliance on the other.
His government was not any kinder to the Akalis either, between 2002 and 2007. The AAP has only continued with the ugly tradition.
The ruling AAP is currently faced with a tough challenge to prove its credibility and popularity among the people in the Zila Parishad and Block Samiti elections. It has been using all the means, ‘saam, daam, dand, beid’ to win these elections. In the process it has been embarrassed with the leaking of an audio clip where the then SSP Patiala is heard telling his junior staff how to prevent the opposition candidates from filing the nomination papers. The SSP has since gone on leave. He has claimed that the audio clip is fake and has been generated through Artificial Intelligence, a standard defence used during these days against all such things.
Punjab and Haryana High Court has ordered the investigation and referred the click to the Central Forensic and Scientific Laboratory, Chandigarh.
After the SSP went on leave, the Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal, who put the audio clip on his social media handles, said that this proved that the audio clip was true.
While this reflects embarrassingly badly for the Punjab Police, the ruling AAP has also suffered a setback. Patiala SSP is the second within one month to go. While he has only gone on leave, just a month ago during the Tarn Taran assembly by-election, the SSP Tarn Taran was suspended following the complaints against her that she was victimising and intimidating the opposition Akali workers. She still remains under suspension.
The embarrassing onus eventually falls on the government and the ruling party. It is difficult to understand why the ruling party needs to go so much out of the way and use the police to influence the elections. The outcome of the by-elections is in no way the reflection on the performance or the prospects of the ruling party. If the ruling party allows fair elections, it will be in a position to gauge the mood of the public. Once the ruling party, anywhere across the country, uses force to win by-elections it loses the sight of reality and starts believing in fake glory.
The AAP still has a chance in Punjab to know about the mood among the masses by letting the process go unhindered, uninterrupted and without interference and that too with such strong force. It will still have more than a year to make the right amends and corrections ahead of the 2027 elections, which are going to be a do or die battle for the party.
The way things have unfolded during the last two months in the state with two SSPs having to face an unceremonious exit, one suspended and another forced to go on leave, has left the ruling AAP to fight the battle of perception at the grassroots. The AAP must think, as the opposition has been rightly asking, if it is really confident about its performance why does it need to use the police the way it has been using it to win the by-elections and various local bodies elections.
