Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
Chandigarh, The Punjab Congress MLAs Mr Parminder Singh & , Gurkirat Singh Kotli , today castigated the Parkash Singh Badal government in the state for having failed to win over the trust of the NRIs which was betrayed by their poor participation in the recent three sangat darshan programmes exclusively organised for them.
In a statement, they said the reason for this trust deficit was that despite all the propaganda made by Mr Badal and the Deputy Chief Minister Mr Sukhbir Singh Badal, nothing tangible had been done for them and even the grievances redressal mechanism which the state government had claimed to have put in place was non-functional. They said because of the failure of the state government to come to their help, the annual NRI sammellan was cancelled and instead, these sangat darshan programmes were organised for them.
They listed several issues that haunt the NRIs, the most important being property and matrimonial disputes. The properties belonging to the NRIs in their native state were not safe and there were too many examples of fraudulent takeover of their properties. In majority of cases, the relief was not being provided to them in such cases through the system. Even the complaints made at the NRI police stations had been of little help. They had to face lot of harassment. Moreover, the judicial system suffered from its own slow pace and the adjudication took years.
They proposed that fast track courts should be set up exclusively for the disposal of such property related disputes involving the NRIs which should decide upon the case within one month of starting the first hearing.
They promised that enacting legislation to this effect would be the first priority of the Congress in the state after coming into power in the next Assembly elections. Girdawris would not be changed without written consent from them. Similarly, sale deeds for their properties would not be executed without fool-proof inquiry.
They said similar was the situation in case of matrimonial disputes. There were cases in which both the NRI men and women had ditched wives or husbands. Punjab had a large number of such destitute women who had been abandoned by the NRI husbands. What was needed was a fool proof mechanism to provide justice to the hapless victims. They said such cases should also be referred to special courts to fast track the same. In such cases also, the trial period should be fixed within which relief must be provided.
They also referred to the black list of the Sikhs which, although pruned, continued to contain many names. They pointed out that most of these people were those who had availed of the provision of political asylum by obtaining false documents from some fraudsters that they faced threats here and had been subjected to human rights violations. There were some organisations which were issuing such bogus certificates. They had not committed any crime but used this provision just to settle abroad. They said the black list should be screened again and such names dropped after double check.
