sardar-ji-who-redeemed-punjab-from-bloodshed

Former Director General of Punjab Police, KPS Gill is deservingly credited with eradicating militancy in Punjab. As the police chief of the terror-stricken state, he led from the front in the war against terror and won it for the state and the country. 

 

However, he could not have won that war without the political support of his Chief Minister Beant Singh. Singh paid the heavy price with his own life when he was killed in a suicide bomb attack outside his office in Punjab Civil Secretariat 29 years ago on August 31, 1995. 

 

Beant Singh is sometimes accused of having turned a “blind eye” to the alleged “police excesses” during the “fight against terror” and that is the reason he remains a polarizing figure in Punjab’s politics even today. 

 

However, he bequeathed a strong political legacy that continues to flourish even now and he moved to the third generation. After his assassination, his son Tej Parkash Singh and daughter Gurkanwal Kaur served as legislators and ministers at different times.

 

Now the baton has been passed to his two grandsons, Ravneet Singh Bittu and Gurkirat Singh Kotli. While Kotli, a former legislator, remains in the Congress, Bittu has joined the BJP and is currently serving as the Minister of State in the Union Railway Ministry. He got elected to the Rajya Sabha unopposed from Rajasthan after losing in Ludhiana in the recent 2024 General Elections.

 

It is natural for someone like Beant Singh to be judged by people as well as history. While for a lot many people he remains a “saviour” and a “messiah”, for others he remains a “villain” allegedly responsible for killing many “innocent youth”.

 

However, it is difficult to imagine today the circumstances Beant Singh was placed against at that time. Punjab was hit by the worst-ever militancy. Innocent people were being butchered across the state. They belonged to all the communities, whether Hindus or Sikhs, and all political parties whether the Congress, the Akali Dal or the BJP. Militants did not discriminate in terms of religion or political parties while choosing their targets.

The state of affairs when Beant took over

 

The extent of terror prevailing in Punjab when Beant Singh took over can be judged from the fact that the polling percentage in those elections hardly touched the double-figure mark. In the countryside across the state, it was negligible. Legislators got elected securing just a few thousand votes only.

It was an atmosphere of fear and terror that Beant Singh had inherited. It was literally a proverbial “crown of thorns”, rather a “crown of bombs” which it proved to be later, that he inherited to become the Chief Minister.

 

It may be very easy to judge Beant Singh today when Punjab is completely peaceful and normal. He may be accused of having used an iron fist, but the actual control was in the hands of police, which had been accorded complete “functional autonomy” with no “political oversight”.

 

The police probably may, rather, have breached the brief, but the onus for that was attributed to the Chief Minister for which he paid with his life.

 

But, Beant Singh did succeed in retrieving and redeeming the much-desired peace in Punjab. He was duly supported by the then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, who accorded him a “free hand” to deal with the situation, although actual control over ensuring law and order was with the DGP Gill.

 

Punjab’s modern history will be incomplete without Beant Singh. It is difficult to make out whether anyone in his place would have managed to pull Punjab out of those dark times the way did. 

Singh did not favour use of excessive force

 

People who have worked closely with the former Chief Minister maintained that he personally was not in favour of using “excessive force” that at times led to the killing of “innocent people” in “police encounters”, which were allegedly “stage-managed”. 

 

However, he is said to have had no control over the police. The Director General of Police KPS Gill would directly report to the union home ministry instead of his Chief Minister. It is said that the Chief Minister could not help in the release of a close relative, who was picked up by police for questioning, as DGP Gill would not entertain any calls in this matter.

 

Gill enjoyed all power and authority and walked away with the credit of “finishing militancy”, which he did, while Beant Singh paid a heavy price with his life, besides being harshly judged for the “commissions and omissions” which were beyond his control at that time.

 

One thing is for sure he succeeded in what he was tasked to do; to restore peace in Punjab, which he did, at the cost of his own life. 

 

There is another part of Beant Singh’s political life. While finishing the militancy will always go to his credit, he also remained a popular and accessible politician of his time. He is believed to have remembered the names of thousands of party workers and would address them by their first name whenever he would meet them. 

 

Those days there were no telephones and means of communication were very limited, plus the militancy. He still managed to reach out to each and every worker of the party across the state.

 

Despite being at such a high risk, he is said to have remained accessible to every worker and legislator, whosoever wanted to reach out to him. This may sound quite strange in the current times when the Chief Ministers have limited their access to the common masses. 

 

This holds true of his political descendants also who have inherited his political legacy and are reaping its benefits as they remain “most inaccessible” and cut off from the people. 

 

Beant Singh was a mass leader, still remembered as “Sardar Ji”, who had risen from the ranks. No matter in whatever way or manner, he will always be remembered by all the people, whether they like him or not.