Ravi Dhaliwal
Tribune News Service
Pathankot, July 4
The idea of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) of appointing candidates as halqa in-charges (caretakers) of the seats they lost has now acquired official sanctity.
Mockery of norms
Being in an absolute majority, the AAP has become so power drunk that its leadership has started making a mockery of the constitutional norms. Congress MLA
Last week, AAP’s Pathankot halqa in-charge Vibhuti Sharma inaugurated a government health facility at Chak Bharain village with senior officers in attendance. This development raised the hackles of Congress leaders with Dinanagar MLA Aruna Choudhury taking up the matter in the Assembly during Zero Hour. Sharma was placed third in the Vidhan Sabha poll results.
Dinanagar halqa in-charge Shamsher Singh, too, has been holding meetings of government officials. He has even gone to the extent of getting prepared a “rubber stamp”. Letters bearing this stamp are immediately taken cognisance of by officers.
Choudhury has repeatedly been complaining to the Deputy Commissioner and the Senior Superintendent of Police about her rival’s political misdemeanours, but officers simply refuse to listen to her.
Former deputy Chief Minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa said: “These caretakers do not have even a modicum of decency or self-respect left with them. How can they face those very people who had cast their vote against them just three months ago? This sort of political chicanery must stop. Such appointments are unconstitutional and unethical in nature. These leaders have no moral right to preside over government machinery.”
Randhawa questioned the very logic and rationale of holding elections if losing candidates were to be given unbridled powers.
Like Vibhuti, Amit Mantu, too, was placed third in the 2022 Assembly poll results. However, he rules the roost in the neighbouring Vidhan Sabha segment of Sujanpur.
The caretaker concept has been turned into a pan-Punjab phenomenon by the AAP. It is visible in all 25 seats the party had lost. In Gurdaspur district, caretakers have been appointed in five of the seven seats.
Ironically, candidates who became MLAs often complain that officials do not listen to them.
“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Being in an absolute majority, the AAP has become so power drunk that its leadership has started making a mockery of the constitutional norms,” said a Congress MLA of this district.
AAP halqa in-charges call shots, Oppn MLAs cry foul
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