The Indian Express | 1 week ago | 19-03-2023 | 12:45 pm
Timing, they say, is everything. And two days after celebrating its first year in power, the Bhagwant Singh Mann government appeared to have finally decided this was it. On the eve of the first death anniversary of controversial Punjabi singer Sidhu Moosewala, the Punjab government launched a statewide crackdown against Amritpal Singh — the self-styled preacher whose open separatist agenda had gone practically unchallenged for eight months — and members of his outfit Waris Punjab De.The much-maligned Punjab Police gave Amritpal a public chase on Saturday, caught on cameras, thus squashing the myth at least for now about the “braveheart”.While the confusion over whether he has managed to escape is giving rise to myriad speculations, with some Sikh overseas bodies calling attention of human rights organisations and expressing fears about the fate of Amritpal, both the state and the government would be heaving a sigh of relief that on the ground there is little counter-reaction to Saturday’s measures.The 30-year-old chief of Waris Punjab De – an outfit founded by Deep Sidhu, who had his own brief tryst with limelight before death in an accident – had dealt a big blow to the credibility of the Aam Aadmi Party government when he and his supporters stormed the Ajnala Police Station on February 23 in a bid to free an aide from custody.Not only had the police failed to stop Amritpal, they had immediately capitulated and said they would release the aide, saying they had little against him. Nearly a month passed without any punitive action against Amritpal, amplifying the Opposition parties’ charges of inexperience against the AAP government.The Mann Cabinet expected its role to come under fresh scrutiny on Moosewala’s death anniversary being marked on Sunday. Huge crowds are expected, with his parents likely to repeat their charge that the state government has failed to get their killed son justice.The Amritpal operation is expected to overshadow that event now, as well as clear the egg left on the AAP government’s face after jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi gave two back-to-back interviews from behind bars. Not just that, with the second interview, he cocked a snook at DGP Gaurav Yadav’s claim that Bishnoi had not given the first interview from inside any Punjab jail.Apart from seizing the initiative from the Opposition with Saturday’s crackdown, the Mann government has lately also had the Congress on the mat, with a series of actions against its leaders. The Vigilance Bureau questioned four Congress leaders, including former ministers Brahm Mohindra and Vijay Inder Singla, in the last one week alone.There has also been movement on the long-pending sacrilege cases from 2015, with a Special Investigation Team (SIT) indicting Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) chief Sukhbir Badal and former DGP Sumedh Singh Saini.Of all the allegations of incompetence hurled at the Mann government, the ones regarding Amritpal hurt the most, as these fed into the old narrative promoted by the BJP of AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal hobnobbing with Khalistani elements. The BJP and other rival parties have also been raising the bogey about a party like the AAP ruling a sensitive border state with its past history of militancy, at a time when there are increasing incidents of supply of arms from across the border using drones.AAP sympathisers argue that the operation against Amritpal came after due deliberation as the government did not want to precipitate any action that would end up lionising the young preacher. AAP supporters called it a “police master stroke”, leaving Amritpal looking weak and fearful.The Ajnala incident, they add, was actually a face-saver as Amritpal’s act of taking the Guru Granth Sahib to the protest had angered a large section of the Sikh community. It also allowed the police to explain away its lack of action as due to the presence of the holy book at the site.While there was some talk of the crackdown against Amritpal also coinciding with the Jalandhar bypoll, even some Opposition leaders were appreciative.Punjab Congress chief Raja Amrinder Singh Warring said Amritpal stood exposed by running away after having bragged often that he was not scared of being arrested.However, apprehension remains that public opinion could quickly change if any of the 78 persons arrested on Saturday is found innocent. The arrests are purportedly in relation to an FIR registered a day after the Ajnala incident.Charges of police overreach could prove terribly damaging and strengthen the voices peddling the narrative of State persecution of Sikhs. Some have already started drawing analogies with police action in the early 1980s, with bands of youngsters, many of them Nihangs, blocking traffic Saturday in solidarity with Amritpal.The confusion around the whereabouts of Amritpal is only adding fuel to fire, and the government would want to close the matter as soon as possible.But even as a section of the Opposition is raising this and accusing the government of ending up drawing “international attention” to the operation, the day belongs to the embattled AAP government.As Pramod Kumar, a political analyst, put it, “The moral of the story is that the government may have acted late, but it has acted well. Now the question is whether they will be able to sustain this position. They should not make any compromises with law and order and communal harmony.”
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