HVC misusing Periphery Act

CHANDIGARH, Sept 28: Former Haryana chief minister Bhajan Lal has blamed the wrong policies of the Bansi Lal government to impose prohibi...

CHANDIGARH, Sept 28: Former Haryana chief minister Bhajan Lal has blamed the wrong policies of the Bansi Lal government to impose prohibition – which was lifted earlier this year – for the declining law and order situation in the state.

In a statement issued here on Sunday, Bhajan Lal, who is a Congress MP, alleged that the prohibition policy had corrupted the police force and motivated the unemployed youth to indulge in liquor smuggling. These wrong policies were largely responsible for the decline in the law and order situation in the state, he added.

The Congress leader alleged that the ruling party was now misusing the Periphery Control Act to harass the law-abiding citizens, living close to Chandigarh. The government had amended the Act to give power to the police to arrest anyone for making minor alterations to meet the increasing housing requirements.

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The amended Act also barred the jurisdiction of civil court to interfere or grant any stay against high-handed arbitrary action of the police and the Deputy Commissioner, he added.

While the BJP government in Delhi was regularising 1500 unauthorised colonies in the capital and Punjab authorities had regularised unauthorised constructions in the periphery area, the HVP-BJP government was moving in the reverse direction by making the old obsolete periphery law extremely harsh, he said.

Bhajan Lal said that only 1600 buildings were constructed without permission in the periphery area ever since 1974 when this Act was adopted by Haryana upto the time when Bansi Lal assumed office in May 1986 but during the last two years about 6000 additional buildings were constructed in connivance with the Panchkula District Administration. He said that he had represented to the Government of India to abolish this law as it was causing great hardship to the landowners.