Akali Dal to seek amendment in law for NRIs gone abroad posing as political victims

Chandigarh, July 16: – The Shiromani Akali Dal would approach the Union Home and External Affairs ministries to seek amendment in the appropriate law to provide relief to those Punjabis who have settled abroad and sought political asylum while the fact of the matter is that they resorted to this ruse to seek greener pastures.
Talking to the media persons here after his 2-week visit to USA and Canada to interact with the Punjabis, Anandpur Sahib MP and party general secretary Prem Singh Chandumajra said these people had committed no crime but their problem was that they could not visit their native land in the absence of travel papers till their cases were settled by the countries where they had sought political asylum. He said the solution was to consider their case not as those who had committed some crime and sought asylum abroad but those seeking economic asylum.Chandumajra said he had talked to the embassy people in the US and he had come to the conclusion on the basis of that discussion that amendment in the law would go a long way in providing relief to these people. Their number of quite large and they were without travel papers. It took a lot of time for their cases to be decided by the country where they had sought asylum. He referred to another problem faced by the NRIs and that was the location of offices of the counsel general as at some places, people had to travel about 1000 km to get their passports renewed. He demanded that at east sub-offices of the counsel general should be opened to solve this problem which was not a big deal.
He claimed his tour was a success as he had succeeded in dispelling certain misplaced perceptions and apprehensions in the minds of the Punjabis. Their major concerns were lack of health and education facilities and infrastructure in Punjab. This was rooted in the communication gap.
Chandumajra was able to convince that Punjab was changing fast with high level of connectivity, 4-lane highways and more airports were coming up. The state was surplus in power. He said the people were unaware of the services being provided under governance reforms and the implementation of the Right to Services Act.
He said yet another major issue weighing the minds of the people abroad was the so called staggering debt which the facts were different as the Finance Commission had taken out Punjab from the list of debt stressed states.He conceded the state government would have to go in for innovative media campaign to make the people aware about the grass root situation and remove misconceptions.Chandumajra said the NRI Punjabis had come to play a major role in the elections as evident from the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and as such, it was necessary that they should have no misgivings about their native land.