Eight months on, panel formed to study Prakash Singh report

Pradeep Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 19

Over eight months after the Prakash Singh Committee, which was formed to fix officials’ accountability for shoddy handling of the violent Jat quota agitation in February 2016, submitted its report, the state government has formed a review committee to examine the report.

In an apparent indication of the BJP government’s ‘go slow’ approach on the recommendations of the committee, headed by former UP DGP Prakash Singh, the state government formed a five-member review committee under the chairmanship of senior IAS officer Keshni Anand Arora and comprising IAS officers Ram Niwas, Navraj Sandhu, Mahavir Singh and Neerja Sekhar.

Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Ram Niwas said the first meeting of the committee was held here today under which preliminary discussions on the Prakash Singh Committee were held. “The review committee will study the responses of the officials indicted by the Prakash Singh Committee besides the structural reforms suggested by the former DGP. The committee will submit its reports in three months,” Ram Niwas asserted.

The formation of the review committee seems to be an attempt to mollify powerful bureaucracy which was apparently agitated as action was being contemplated against some of its members by the state government.

The recommendations of the committee had singled out certain officials for their laxity and indecisiveness in tackling the Jat stir which led to loss of 30 lives and destruction of property worth hundreds of crores in the Jat-dominated districts of the state.

The lawlessness across several districts brought a lot of embarrassment to the BJP government which remained a mute spectator as rioters went around looting shops and commercial establishments even as the Army was called out to control the situation.

The committee had indicted 90 officials, including IAS and IPS officers, for mala fide and deliberate negligence. Though the government did not make the report public, the report indicted several officers, including the then DGP, then Rohtak range IGP, then DCs of Rohtak, Sonepat, Jhajjar and Hisar and then SPs of Kaithal and Jhajjar.