The first attack on democracy took place after the Akali-BJP alliance assumed power in 2007 when the armed youths of the Akali Dal’s youth and students wing captured booths and stopped people from voting in the local bodies elections. The goons enjoyed the patronage of Sukhbir Singh Badal and protection of the police. Their actions led to public protests even by BJP workers at many places. Their party’s top brass, however, maintained a mysterious silence. The objective behind the rampaging Akali supporters was to capture the local bodies in the Malwa region, the Akali Dal’s traditional stronghold, which it had lost to the Congress in the 2002 elections.

Tasting blood in the local bodies polls, the highhanded functioning of the Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, in-charge of the home portfolio and his arrogant brother-in-law and Revenue Minister Bikramjit Singh Majithia has been going viral. The situation has been going from bad to worse. There has been a spate of incidents of violation of the rule of law. Abductions and rapes of young girls and attacking and killing of police officers, mostly by the Majithia-headed Youth Akali Dal workers, are crippling the Constitutional institutions.

It is in this background that Sukhbir recently directed its district units to check antecedents of all party office bearers to weed out all those with a criminal record. Powerful politicians making lofty declarations usually do not themselves act on what they profess. Will the Badals “weed out” from the party the former SGPC president Bibi Jagir Kaur who was convicted for five years imprisonment in the criminal case of her daughter’s murder and had to quit the cabinet? And then what about Sukhbir, who is also president of the Akali Dal, engineering defection of Congress MLA Joginderpal Jain who is facing a number of criminal cases and admitting him into his party.

The Badals favourite DGP Sumedh Singh Saini has described the prevailing situation in Punjab as not deterioration of law and order but “individual crimes and criminal cases.” According to him the real threat to law and order comes from the separatist elements attempts to revive terrorism in the border state. Does the incidents of kidnapping of minor girls, rapes, killing of policemen by the Youth Akali Dal goons and involvement of some Akali ministers in criminal cases not imply deterioration of law and order? Saini’s attempt to focus on the alleged terrorist threat is nothing but an attempt to divert the attention from deteriorated law and order to save his boss Sukhbir from the charge of failing to judiciously administer his home portfolio?

Saini and his political bosses must have read the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s December 28 comments drawing a parallel between the law and order situation prevailing in Delhi and Punjab saying that the crime against women was on the rise in the state. “Enough is enough”, the judges said.

One of the major causes of Punjab’s deplorable conditions of law and order is the Deputy Chief Minister’s decision to subjugate the police and civil administration to the Akali MLAs and defeated Akali candidates who were appointed as ‘halqa (constituency) in-charges’. The police and the civil administration now function much on their diktats and less according to the rule of law.

That the situation in Punjab has touched a new low is also indicated by the happenings in the Punjab Assembly during its recently held winter session when Majithia and the Congress MLA Rana Gurjit Singh allegedly abused each other amidst chaotic scenes. Their actions did not perhaps cause much surprise in the rest of the country. Most of the Assemblies which now have large number of legislators of criminal background have been witnessing physical brawls between the members and charging their Speakers with partisan conduction of the proceedings of their Houses and attending their ruling parties meetings. Punjab Assembly has also witnessed such chaotic actions in the past.

The latest case is of Majithia and Congress member Rana Gurjit Singh allegedly exchanging expletives amidst din in the House. But what must have surprised many was the Punjab Assembly Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal declaring that he could not hear Majithia mouthing foul language because of the commotion in the House. His assertion came even as Majithia’s expletives were caught on the camera and were telecast live by a couple of TV channels and You Tube. Newspersons covering the proceedings also heard his expletives. Standards of public behaviour later touched a new low when during his interaction with media persons Sukhbir responding to a woman scribe’s criticism of Majithi’s use of expletives asked her to spell out what Majithia said in the House.

It will be uncharitable to attribute motives to Atwal’s assertion that he could not hear what Majithia said. It is possible that Assembly’s microphone system in the House might have momentarily developed a snag only when Majithia was hurling expletives against Rana due to which the Speaker could not hear the expletives the two members allegedly exchanged. Anyway, the Speaker expunged the expletives both members had exchanged even though he had not heard them. When the Congress later screened the CD showing Majithia’s abuses on huge screens it installed in Chandigarh’s Sector 17 City Centre, Atwal said that showing the CD publicly was unconstituti8onal and action would be taken against Congress CLP leader Sunil Jakhar.

One really feels sorry for the octogenarian five-time chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, whose record of political functioning is being soiled in his sunset years mainly because of the style of functioning of his foreign-educated offspring. In my over 40 years of frequent one-on-one interactions with the senior Badal after I shifted from Ludhiana to Chandigarh in 1968, I closely watched his democratic style of functioning and skillfully acquiring the control of levers of power. He spearheaded the Akali Dal’s longest battle against the Emergency excesses during 1975-1977. His humility and amiable nature won all those who came into contact with him.

2012 has given a parting but unpalatable gift to ruling Akali-BJP. In the first year of its existence, its government has been stigmatized by anti-incumbency that a new government seldom faces before its mid-term. (IPA Service)