Loyalist booked, AAP halqa incharge blocks highway; commuters stranded

Dinanagar AAP halqa incharge Shamsher Singh, who protested against the registration of an FIR in a case pertaining to mining activities against one of his loyalists, created a highly embarrassing situation for his own government by blocking the Gurdaspur-Pathankot highway today for five hours following which thousands of commuters were left stranded.

Shamsher, who has been supposedly handed unbridled powers by Chandigarh and Delhi-based senior AAP leadership, had contested the 2022 Assembly poll on the party ticket and lost to four-time MLA Aruna Chaudhary of the Congress.

Among several demands that he put forward to the district administration, one was to call SSP Harish Dayama to the protest site.

Eyewitnesses and even some of his supporters admitted that the language used by Shamsher against police officers, who had apparently arrived at the site to diffuse the situation, was “highly derogatory”. In the past too, Shamsher had used unparliamentary language against cops. His son, Mani, too reached the protest site at Dinanagar and used foul language against cops.

Senior officers, including ASP Dilpreet Singh, SP (D) Balwinder Singh Sandhu, DSP Sukhraj Singh and Inspector Raj Kumar had to bear the brunt of his verbal volleys. SSP Dayama could not be contacted for his side of the story.