The SAD Senior Vice President Dr Daljeet Singh Cheema today challenged the Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh to make public all the call details of the Shakot SHO Parminder Singh, covering the calls made by and to him since the announcement of the by-poll process for the Shahkot Vidhan Sabha Constituency. “If at all they are resorting to such lowly practices as tapping the phones of their political opponents, government officials and private citizens, then the Chief Minister should actually make public details of threatening calls being made by sand mining kingpins to the concerned SHO.”The SAD also called upon the Election Commission of India to take suo motto notice of the government indulging in tapping of phones of political personages especially when a poll process is on. “This amounts to a brazen misuse of government machinery during the electoral process. and the EC should immediately step in to stop it."The Akali leader said that the Chief Minister was actually "browbeating and stopping the officers from discharging their duties impartially and in fairness. has openly sent out a strong signal to the entire bureaucracy and the police force that any one interacting with the representatives of the people in the discharge of their duties would be severely penalized.
Thus, the CM has categorically told the officers that they should shut out the representatives of the people from the opposition parties. Whom can the people now turn to for the redress of their grievances against the government?”In a statement here this afternoon, Dr Cheema said, “The Chief Minister is telling a lie in asserting that I called the SHO.The fact is that the SHO called me several times . He sounded extremely nervous and disturbed and said that he was being threatened by “the higher ups” for having registered a case for illegal mining against the Congress candidate from Shahkot, Hardev Singh Sherowali.In fact,the SHO is under so much pressure and psychological stress that he called me even today. It seems the state agencies did not brief the CM about this call made today,” said Dr Cheema The Akali leader also asked the Chief Minister to tell the people what is illegal or inappropriate for a government officer to call a representative of the peoplein the state.Dr Cheema also questioned the “the ethics and legality of the government secretly tapping the phones of the Opposition leaders and of their own officers. This is a national issue as it amounts to an outrage against the Constitution of India which guarantees the right to privacy to all citizens of India.”