The state police may move Punjab and Haryana High Court against any order to shift the 120-year-old Punjab Police Academy out of Maharaja Ranjit Singh Fort at Phillaur in the light of Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) seeking the forts possession after declaring it a heritage site. An ASI team had visited Phillaur twice in the recent past to take charge of the fort but was not allowed to do so by police personnel on the grounds that senior officers were not available. The ASI wrote a letter to the Punjab DGP in September,informing him that it has declared Maharaja Ranjit Singh Fort a monument of national importance through a notification issued on September 7. The letter requested that the fort and moat be handed over to ASI at the earliest so that conservation work may be done as per archaeological norms. The ASI had also written in this regard to the Jalandhar Deputy Commissioner Priyank Bharti,who confirmed receiving ASI's letters and said,We are getting the matter examined. The notification about the fort was made by ASI following a civil writ petition filed by one Dilbag Singh in the Punjab and Haryana High Court for the declaration of the fort as a national monument. The court had accepted his plea but the ASI had failed to take charge of the fort. Subsequently,Singh had filed a contempt petition in the court that ASI had not declared the fort a monument. Punjab Director General of Police PS Gill wrote a letter to the Punjab Chief Secretary SC Agarwal on July 21 this year stating that the Punjab Police Academy had been functional in this fort since 1891 and had not only maintained the fort excellently but had also kept up its pristine status as well. He said the fort was open for the common people on every Thursday for sightseeing and for visiting the holy mazar inside. He had said that the Academy was a prominent training institution known worldwide for its excellence in training. ''Declaring it as national monument will not only hamper the training process but will be a compromise with its security as well,' he had said and had urged the chief secretary to take up the issue with the ASI to get the notification canceled. Sources said the preliminary objections raised by PPA earlier to the intent of notification and thereafter the supplementary objections raised by the state police in the reply to ASI in September this year had not been considered while issuing the final notification. An officer said,Every year around 8,000 police personnel from Punjab,other state forces in the country,paramilitary forces and also from police forces from aboard are trained here. Thus the training of such large number of men will suffer. When contacted,Additional Director General of Police (Human Resource Development and Community Policing) SK Sharma said,Initially the user organisation,that is,Punjab Police was never made a party to the PIL that was filed in the high court and so we are taking legal recourse and moving Punjab and Haryana High Court in this regard.
