The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today said the green signal given by the Congress government to its cadre to strike out at Akali workers and dislodge them from all democratic posts at the grass root level was resulting in a breakdown in law and order in Punjab and gangsters were taking advantage of the situation to strike at will.In a statemnent here, party mp and secretary general Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa said repression killings of Akali workers were on the rise and that two Akali workers were murdered by Congress activists at Rukanshahwala village in Ferozepur district yesterday. He said the police had failed to register a case against Jasmail Singh Laddi Gehri, the husband of Ferozepur Rural legislator Satkar Kaur who was said to have engineered the killings according to the victim’s family. “This is a persistent theme in all cases of repression against Akali workers. The police fails to take any action against Congress politicians who are accused of engineering the same”. He said in the case of the Ferozepur incident the accused wanted to take over the village panchayat. “Similarly two days back we had a case in which the Congress mla from Faridkot tried to take over the municipal council by getting four councillors picked up illegally from a hotel in Zirakpur”.
Stating that such mayhem could only continue due to political patronage, Mr Dhindsa said it was condemnable that the State police was acting like the B team of the Congress at the grass root level. “Police officers are failing to give justice to victims of Congress repression due to which such cases are on the increase”, he added.The Akali mp said the total break down of the law and order situation had also given a fillip to gangsters to indulge in sensational shoot outs and dacoities. He said a recent case was the brazen shoot and scoot with cash dacoity engineered by gangsters on the busy Banur-Rajpura highway yesterday. He said the gangsters had injured the driver of an armed cash van and fled with Rs 1.33 crore in cash.Asking the Congress government to pay due attention to maintaining law and order, the mp said Punjab was a border state and any laxity on this front could have serious consequences. He also asked the Congress government to snub its leaders who were encouraging the Congress cadre to indulge in repression of Akalis with inflammatory speeches. “If you do not do this it will be amply clear that your loyalties lie with your leaders and not the people of Punjab”, Mr Dhindsa said while asking the Akali rank and file to counter all cases of repression strongly in a democratic manner”.