Chandigarh: Decrying Union home minister Amit Shah’s statement on law and order situation in Punjab, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) senior leader and Punjab Cabinet minister Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer on Wednesday alleged that it was a futile attempt by BJP to malign the Punjab’s image to gain political mileage in the poll-bound Gujarat.
Addressing a press conference here, Hayer alleged that BJP was unnerved with the increasing popularity of AAP in Gujarat and that it was thus using cheap tactics to escape an imminent defeat in Gujarat elections. He further held that the crime rate was far less in Punjab as compared to many BJP-ruled states including Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.
402 gangsters arrested in AAP's rule
Rejecting Shah’s statement, he said that during the nine-month rule of AAP as many as 402 gangsters had been arrested and 363 weapons recovered.
He held that according to the NCRB report related to cases of violence in the country from 2018 to 2021, Punjab ranked 15th in the number of cases of gun/explosive related violence among the states of the country far behind Haryana and Rajasthan.
He said that Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan topped with highest gun violence cases in the country. From 2018 to 2021, 1,34,958 cases of gun violence were registered in Uttar Pradesh, 57,653 in Madhya Pradesh and 27,193 in Rajasthan. While only 1,820 cases of gun violence were reported in Punjab as against 8,759 cases of gun violence in Haryana in the same span.
He went on to allege that in the past four years, cases of gun violence in Haryana were increasing five times faster than in Punjab. Singers used guns and pistols in many Haryanvi songs but still Punjab was being blamed for spreading gun culture, he further alleged.
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