Chandigarh, February 4
Taking up a petition challenging Punjab Police’s decision to collect “facilitation charges” for services like character verification certificate and police report on passport applications, the Punjab and Haryana High Court today issued a notice of motion to the state of Punjab and the DGP for February 19.
The Tribune had written about this matter on Monday.
Chief Justice Vijender Jain and Justice K.S. Ahluwalia issued the notice on a public interest litigation challenging a circular issued by the police chief. The petition said the circular did not mention the name of the “state fund” to which the amounts so collected would be credited.
The circular, rather, stated in the beginning that though the approval of the Punjab government for collecting these facilitation charges was being sought, still it directed the police officials to start collecting these charges. Thus, it was an instance of compulsory exaction of taxes and fees, without any authority of law, and an abuse of the office by the DGP, the petitioner said.
The petition pointed out that for verifying the character of a citizen applying for a government service, the police would charge facilitation charges of Rs 200, and similar amount would be charged for character verification for other purposes. For other related services, not been specified in the circular, the police officials would charge Rs 200 from the individual citizens. Even for the issuance of a copy of any document like an FIR, the police officials would charge Rs 30 and for giving its certified copy, they would charge Rs 100.
