Senior Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader and Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal has demanded the resignation of chief minister Bhagwant Mann over recent student protests. She held Mann accountable for police action against female students at Lovely Professional University (LPU) in Jalandhar.
She said that Mann, who also serves as the state’s Home minister, must take moral responsibility for the complete “collapse of law and order”.
During the Maawan-Dheeyan Insaaf rally in Sangrur on Monday, Harsimrat symbolically placed a memorandum on the vacant chair of the deputy commissioner (DC) before an official accepted it. DC Poonamdeep Kaur said she was busy in a meeting so naib tehsildar Jagdeep Inder Singh was assigned the duty, who confirmed receiving the memorandum.
Harsimrat said the memorandum, addressed to the governor, demanded an independent time-bound probe into the bribery allegations against chief minister Mann’s wife. It also demanded releasing ₹60,000 to all women as promised by AAP and called for justice in cases of alleged police atrocities, including the “torture” of Mohanjit Singh and alleged suicide of a Dalit man in Sangrur.
On LPU protest she said, “The entire incident reflected total governance failure. It is incomprehensible to believe that rumours alone took the situation to this turn. The manner in which hooligans have been caught with walkie-talkies indicates a deeper conspiracy which should be probed by an independent agency.” Asserting that the police administration had also failed, she said LPU hosts students from around the world. Visuals of youth being dragged, pushed to the ground and hit have not only marred the reputation of the university but also exposed the law and order situation in Punjab.
She alleged that outsiders had taken over government departments, pointing to the recent Enforcement Directorate raid at GMADA office. She claimed that Delhi leaders Manish Sisodia and Satyendra Jain were taking decisions on change of land use cases besides selling agricultural land below market value to builders for profit.