Jalandhar: As the demand for a CBI probe into the suicide of Punjab State Warehousing Corporation district manager Gagandeep Randhawa grows, Punjab’s uneasy past with the central agency has come back into focus. In Nov 2020, the then Congress govt withdrew its general consent to the CBI after a prolonged legal and political battle over the probe into the electorally sensitive 2015 sacrilege cases. At the time, Punjab became the third state in three days and the eighth in five years to withdraw general consent to the agency.
The fallout stemmed from the 2015 Bargari and related sacrilege cases, which were initially handed over to the CBI by the then Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP govt. However, the CBI’s findings were completely at odds with those of the Punjab Police SIT. The state govt later fought the matter in the Punjab and Haryana high court and then in the Supreme Court to get the cases transferred back to the Punjab Police after the state assembly passed a resolution to that effect in Sept 2018.
In the present suicide case, former AAP minister Laljit Singh Bhullar is the main accused, while his father and personal assistant have also been named in the FIR. Punjab had withdrawn its general consent to the CBI under Section 6 of the Delhi Special Police Establishment (DSPE) Act, 1946. Mizoram was the first state to do so on July 17, 2015, followed by West Bengal on Nov 16, 2018, and Chhattisgarh on Jan 10, 2019. Rajasthan withdrew consent on July 19, 2020, while Maharashtra did so on Oct 21, 2020.
Kerala, Jharkhand and Punjab followed in quick succession on Nov 4, 5 and 6, 2020, respectively. The Bargari and related cases saw a major turn when the Punjab Police SIT, led by then DIG Ranbir Singh Khattra,claimed to have cracked the case in June 2018. Later, Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim was namedas an accused in sacrilege-related cases.After debating the Justice Ranjit Singh Commission report, constituted by the Ad growing political chatter in Punjab,a fresh controversy has erupted over allegations that Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann verbally abused a senior Congress leader during a heated phone call.
Though no official confirmation has been issued by either side, the claim has quickly become the talk of the town, fuelling sharp reactions across political circles. Opposition leaders argue that such behaviour, if true, reflects a worrying decline in political decorum and raises questions about the CM’s temperament, while supporters of the government dismiss the buzz as yet another attempt to stir unrest.The episode has added a new layer of tension to an already charged political atmosphere in the state.