Bid to foist puppet DGP: Akali leader

Chandigarh: Bikram Singh Majithia of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) alleged on Monday that the Aam Aadmi Party’s state government had proposed to amend the Punjab Police Act for regularising its “puppet DGP” who will help with its mission of “political vendetta”.Claiming to have been shocked that chief minister Bhagwant Mann wanted to bring in this amendment “through the backdoor on Tuesday without any wider discussion in the Vidhan Sabha”, he said: “This seeks to overturn not only the Supreme Court’s directives about the terms and conditions of appointing the DGPs but also the norms of a healthy democracy.”Dubbing the move as also against AAP’s stated policy on the Supreme Court’s directives, Majithia said: “Mann ferried his boss, Arvind Kejriwal, across the country on the Punjab government’s aircraft, acting as a tour operator for Kejriwal’s agenda of building a political consensus to force the Centre to withdraw an ordinance that rests powers with the lieutenant governor instead of his elected government as decided by the top court.”Majithia claimed that: “The directions of the Supreme Court — that only the officers with more than six months of remaining service be submitted to the Centre in a proper format of six members, from which the Centre will prune the list to three for final selection by the state — was being done away with to foist a puppet DGP on the state. Besides disturbing law and order, the proposed amendments will also create an unrest in the police force.”