The Fact News Service
Delhi, March 16
Former union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Thursday held a symbolic protest to demand the resumption of parliament proceedings to allow members to raise peoples’ issues including the complete breakdown of law and order in Punjab and the sense of fear among Punjabis at gangsters giving interviews from jail.
Holding a placard outside parliament, Harsimrat Badal appealed to the Speaker to ensure peoples’ issues could be highlighted even as she asserted that the ruling party was principally responsible for the disruption of parliament proceedings. “It is the ruling party’s responsibility to ensure smooth function of the august house. It is unfortunate that the ruling party has joined the opposition in disrupting parliament”.
Urging the Speaker to save democracy, the Bathinda MP said the issues of farmers and youth including the government’s inability to double farm incomes besides rising unemployment needed to be taken up for resolution. “The common man is also facing the heat of increase in daily commodities and there is no respite in sight”.
Badal said she also wanted to take up the issue of a complete breakdown in the law and order situation in Punjab under the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) dispensation. She said amid the turmoil in Punjab during the course of which a large section of industry had shifted to other States there was a most disturbing development of a dreaded gangster – Lawrence Bishnoi giving an interview to the media from the Bathinda jail. “This has rattled the common man and there is a sense of fear that no one is safe. A short while earlier Punjab jails witnessed gang wars and now this development shows that the law and order situation has gone completely out of hand. There are even demands for the resignation of chief minister Bhagwant Mann who holds the home ministry and there is a feeling that urgent corrective steps are needed to prevent Punjab from slipping into complete anarchy. A discussion on this urgent issue would have helped convey the feelings of Punjabis to the nation”.
The Bathinda MP said Punjabis were clamoring for peace and communal harmony, both of which had been shattered in Punjab. She pointed out how the zero-tolerance policy of the erstwhile Parkash Singh Badal government towards crime had led to the arrest of Lawrence Bishnoi during Akali tenure. She also highlighted how the AAP government had gone back on all promises made to Punjabis besides the rising drug menace and financial mismanagement.
