Complaint Against Former Punjab Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu
Complaint Against Former Punjab Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu
I sent the following letter to the authorities in Punjab.
To June 14, 2024
The Secretary
Department of Legal and Legislative Affairs
Government of Punjab
Subject: Your Letters Regarding a Complaint Against a Former Punjab Minister Mr. Navjot Singh Sidhu
Dear Officer,
I (Rakesh Raman) am a government’s national award-winning journalist and founder of the humanitarian organization RMN Foundation. I run various environment protection, human rights protection, education awareness, and anti-corruption campaigns at the local as well as international levels.
Please refer to your letter No. PRAF-11023/46/2022-(3PA)SPA dated 06.06.2024 (reproduced below as Exhibit 1). In this letter, you have mentioned some complaint that you say I have filed against Mr. Navjot Singh Sidhu. But you have not given the details of the complaint. As I file dozens of complaints against politicians, bureaucrats, and other criminals, I cannot recall the complaint that you have mentioned in your letter.
However, in an article dated May 16, 2021 written on my news site RMN News Service, I had quoted a May 16, 2021 report in the Hindustan Times newspaper, which said that the Punjab Vigilance / Anti-Corruption Bureau has fast-tracked its investigation into some ‘shady deals’ involving Sidhu, his wife, and their close associates.
I had reproduced the same article with the headline: “Congress Leader Navjot Singh Sidhu Faces Corruption Allegations in Punjab” in the June 2021 issue of The Integrity Bulletin anti-corruption magazine that I run. [ You can click here to read the article. ]
If you are treating this article as a formal complaint and believe that there is prima facie evidence to further investigate the matter, you must take suo moto cognizance and begin the investigation. I fail to understand your purpose of writing repeated letters to me. Moreover, when the entire world is working on digital platforms, you are wasting plenty of paper to write such perfunctory letters and thus causing an enormous environmental damage.
It appears from your letter that the Punjab Government officials prefer to work in an inefficient manner with archaic procedure, as you have not mentioned any email address or even the phone number on your letter sent to me. When the Supreme Court, the high courts, and lower courts have introduced digital courts / e-courts which are supposed to be paperless, you are asking me to file paper documents related to the so-called complaint and wasting paper by writing vague letters to me.
Obviously, the Punjab Government and its officials are not willing to evolve so that they could provide good governance to the citizens. The bureaucrats who still work with obsolete systems cannot comprehend a simple fact that they can write the official letters in Punjabi within the state, but when the letters are to be sent out of the state (like in my case in Delhi), they need to use English which is the traditional language to communicate with all the citizens in the country.
With these details, I request you to clearly communicate to me the procedure for handling such complaints of white-collar financial crimes where only circumstantial evidence is required to investigate the case and which is the responsibility of the investigating officers. If you find that the article that I have written and mentioned above deserves investigation by your investigating agencies, then you can begin the investigation without writing these casual template-based letters to me.
Your office letter as Exhibit 1 is given below.
Exhibit 1: Punjab Government letter No. PRAF-11023/46/2022-(3PA)SPA dated 06.06.2024
Contact
Rakesh Raman
Editor, RMN News Service [ Website ]
Founder, RMN Foundation [ Website ]
463, DPS Apts., Plot No. 16, Sector 4
Dwarka, Phase I, New Delhi 110 078, India
WhatsApp / Mobile: 9810319059 | Contact by Email
