The politics of vendetta is so firmly entrenched and so personalised in Punjab that there is little the local Congress or Shiromani Akali Dal can do to surprise. But the extraordinary process put in motion to expel former chief minister Amarinder Singh from the Akali-majority state assembly could, and perhaps should, have serious repercussions. On Wednesday, the assembly passed a breach of privilege motion against Singh and expelled him from the House. Earlier in the week, a House committee had indicted him for irregularities in the land transfer case in Amritsar when he was chief minister. The specifics of that case bear careful inquiry, as do all cases of alleged impropriety against high and low officeholders. However, the manner in which the Punjab assembly has chosen to dispense justice raises extremely disturbing questions about how investigations are conducted and the extraordinary steps taken to do nothing other than victimise political rivals. These questions must be addressed by the political class and also by the courts — and Singh has predictably chosen to seek a reprieve from the high court. Or else a dangerous precedent could be set.

Singh’s expulsion raises two issues. One, the damage to the rule of law when short cuts to victimising opponents are passed off as principled fights against corruption. Singh too should know all about this. Five years ago, when he was chief minister, he had the then Akali chief and current Punjab chief minister, Parkash Singh Badal, arrested on charges of having accumulated thousands of crores while in office. Then too, these columns had underlined the same worry: that the government of the day would be insufficiently concerned with establishing a case for wrongdoing, and then acting upon it normally to win a conviction; it would instead influence the processes of justice. Obviously little has changed in Punjab’s politics.

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