M A I N   N E W S

SAD tells cops to ‘gather’ info on Oppn poll agents
Ruchika M Khanna
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 24
Acting “at the behest” of their political bosses from the Akali Dal, the Punjab police are reportedly collecting information on all polling agents employed by various political parties in the 2013 zila parishad, block samiti and panchayat elections.

Though top officials in the Punjab police have denied that any official instructions have been issued to the CID staff across Punjab telling them to collect such information, officials working in the CID branches in the Lok Sabha constituencies of Amritsar, Khadoor Sahib, Bathinda, Ludhiana, Patiala, Ferozepur and Anandpur Sahib told The Tribune that they were reportedly issued telephonic instructions on April 17 to gather this information and send it to the headquarters within two days.

Verbal instructions have been reportedly issued to the police department’s CID staff — used for intelligence gathering — to collect all information, including their names, addresses and telephone numbers, of polling agents used by different political parties. The move is significant as polling agents are chosen from among the most trusted and committed cadre of any political party. By collecting such information about them, anybody can use it to either intimidate a rival party’s worker or even try to convert them into their own supporters.

The officials said that they have already sent this list to the police headquarters here.

Hardeep Dhillon, ADGP Intelligence denied that any such official instructions have been issued. “Whosoever reported this to you would be better suited to confirm this. I don’t even think that the people who told you this were actually from the CID staff,” he said.

Officials from the CID branch, however, maintain that the instructions were issued to them from the office of DIG, Intelligence, at the police headquarters in Chandigarh.

“We were asked not just to report about the Congress polling agents, but also about the polling agents used by rebel Akali leaders who contested the panchayat elections,” said an official while confirming that he sent the entire report last Friday.