PATIALA FIASCO: AAP govt needs to learn state religio-politics

The police crackdown after the clash between Shiv Sena (Bal Thackeray) members and Khalistan supporters in Patiala on April 29, notwithstanding, the failure of the new AAP government in Punjab to anticipate the situation on the ground shows it completely misread the goings-on of the past fortnight there.

The AAP government also faced severe criticism from Sikh outfits for failing to prevent the Shiv Sena’s march.

Even though the AAP maintains it was not a communal clash but a clash between opposition political parties and that the arrests have been made from both the sides, the question that remains unanswered is — why were both the groups allowed to take out a march as the march by the Sena members as well as Parwana’s objection to it, was unknown to none?

Reports are doing the round there had been conflicting stands of Parwana and Sena members in the past over the issues of Khalistan as well as the Army action on the Golden Temple, the holiest site of Sikhs. Not only this, the former has also faced a police case for his comments on such issues in the past.

Political scientists opine that while the Delhi model for better power, health and education facilities, is fine but the AAP government would do better to weigh the gravity

of radical Hindu and Panthic groups and farmers and labour unions.

Dr Ronki Ram, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Chair Professor in political science, Panjab University, agrees that though police failed to calculate the situation in Patiala beforehand because of which the clash took place, the incident, nonetheless, proves how the people of Punjab — who had suffered and endured militancy for over a decade — cannot become the target of such “divisive designs of some antiPunjab/Punjabiyat groups anymore’’.

However, such issues are sensitive in Punjab and need to be aptly handled well in time for the peace and harmony in Punjab, he added.