Navjot Singh Sidhu opposes Centre’s appointment notification. Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu on Tuesday wrote a letter to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh opposing Centre’s notification regarding making various appointments in Chandigarh. On September 25, Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued a notification merging the Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) rank officers of Chandigarh police into the Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands Police Service (DANIPS) cadre through which now their services were transferable in other Union Territories. With this notification, the Centre gets right of making appointments in Chandigarh police.
Sidhu, in a letter to Singh, alleged that the notification violates the very foundation and purpose of the Punjab Reorganization Act and the Rajiv-Longowal Accord.Detailing about the notification, Sidhu wrote, “The central government has brought various posts of Chandigarh Administration, including the post of Deputy Superintendent of Police, within the ambit of DANIPS Cadre. With effect from the date of said notification, all the posts mentioned in the aforesaid notification would be outside the ambit of States of Punjab and Haryana and would be filled up by way of procedure prescribed under the said notification by the Government of India. As I will explain in detail hereinafter, this notification shakes the very foundation and purpose of the Punjab Reorganization Act and the Rajiv-Longowal Accord.”
He further highlighted the specific aspects of the Punjab Reorganization Act, 1966, according to which the assets and liabilities were to be bifurcated between the state of Punjab and Haryana in the ratio of 60:40.Asserting that the said 60:40 rule became a binding convention and was being followed religiously for over a period of 50 years, Sidhu also urged the Home Minister to reconsider the aforesaid notification.
“I beseech upon you to reconsider the aforesaid notification of 25.09.2018. By way of said notification, the legitimate and existing binding convention of 60:40 has been unjustifiably taken away from the people of Punjab. There is genuine apprehension amongst the Punjabis that by enacting more notifications like the one, all the cadres would be taken away from the Punjabi Officers and as such, their legitimate expectations would be frustrated,” the letter reads.
Further touching on the subject of Chandigarh, being the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana, Sidhu said that it is an “utmost dismay and disappointment for the Punjabis”.
He also claimed that the Union Territory was to be transferred to Punjab on the 26th Day of January 1986 as per ‘the understanding attained in the written mandate by way of Rajiv-Longowal Accord signed in 1985’. (ANI)

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