Taking strong exception to the Congress MP’s attack on the integrity and fairness of the Punjab DGP, Captain Amarinder Singh on Tuesday asked Pratap Singh Bajwa to write to him (as chief minister and home minister of the state), or to the party high command in Delhi if he had any grudge or complaint against the state government.Tearing through Bajwa’s letter to DGP Dinkar Gupta word by word, the Chief Minister said it reflected the Rajya Sabha MP’s total frustration and desperation, and exposed his own shameless lies in the matter.By his own admission, Bajwa had been highlighting what he alleges to be the “politico-police-drug nexus, production and distribution of illicit liquor, under State patronage and rampant illegal mining in the State of Punjab,” Captain Amarinder pointed out, adding that if the state government had to take any vindictive action it would not have waited for the Centre to provide him security. “Have we not tolerated his criticism of the state government all this time?”, the Chief Minister quipped, adding that even the opposition parties in the state could not accuse his government of being spiteful.Making it clear that withdrawal of the state security to the Congress MP was his decision, as home minister, based on the intel inputs from the Punjab Police, Captain Amarinder said Bajwa’s personal attack on the DGP was not only misplaced but also against the culture and ethos of the Congress party, of which he is a senior member. “If he (Bajwa) does not have confidence in me or my government, why has he not approached the party high command all this time with his grouses? Does he have no faith even in them?” asked the Chief Minister.Even though he had made the situation clear yesterday itself, Captain Amarinder said Bajwa’s tirade against the DGP had forced him to repeat the points he had already clarified with regard to the Congress MP’s security. For one, Bajwa was not the only person in Punjab whose security personnel had been withdrawn since the outbreak of the Covid, which required cops to be diverted to pandemic duty.
As many as 6500 cops had been pulled out of personal security in the interest of the state, said the Chief Minister, adding that only six of these personnel came from Bajwa’s security.Secondly, the decision on the state police security withdrawal from Bajwa was taken only after he got 25 personnel (+ 2 Escort drivers and a Scorpio vehicle) from the CISF under the Z security provided to him by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), pointed out the Chief Minister.Thirdly, said Captain Amarinder, the security threat to the Badals, which Bajwa continues to harp on to justify his baseless charges against the state government and police, had been identified by the same Punjab Police, whom the MP was accusing of partisanship. It was illogical to believe that a police force which was providing security to leaders of an opposition party would withdraw police personnel from an MP of the ruling party unless without good cause, he added.Even if Bajwa considers personal security as a prestige symbol, which seems to be the case, his ego should be satisfied by the fact that he has a security posse of more than 25 CISF personnel, the Chief Minister said. He further pointed out that it was, in fact, the MHA that had, in 2019, decided that Bajwa’s no longer required Z security as there was “no specific input indicating any specific threat” to him.If the MHA had received any new intel inputs after July last year, they had chosen not to share it with the state government, with whom they had not consulted before restoring Bajwa’s CISF security, said Captain Amarinder.Unfortunately, by looking at this whole affair with his own myopic vision, Bajwa had once again shown lack of political maturity, the Chief Minister said. He further said that by accusing Punjab police of politicisation of threat assessment, the MP was trying to lower the morale of a force whose credentials were above board, and which had been successfully protecting Punjab and its people from the grave threats of terrorism, narco-terror, mafia and gangsterism for the past more than 3 years.“Does Bajwa really believe, and wants people to believe, that a police force which lacks propriety, independence and professional ethics, as alleged by him, would have achieved all this?” asked the Chief Minister.Far from showing the `boldness, courage and determination’ that he is talking about, Bajwa, with his petty and clearly motivated actions, was only exposing that he had a political axe to grind, said Captain Amarinder. This was shocking and shameful, especially considering the crisis Punjab was going through as a result of the pandemic, he added.