Traffic, Youth, Weapon and Road Rages in Punjab

On 27th February this year, a lawyer was shot dead by some youth just
because he had objected to their parking the cars outside the gate of
his relative's residence in Phase 3A of SAS Nagar (Mohali). Now on
this Sunday an assistant sub-inspector of the Punjab Police was shot
dead by unidentified people on the Jalandhar-Ludhiana highway late
Sunday night during his night highway patrol duty. These two incidents
have got something common and giving us the indication of another
upcoming law and order problem in the state.

As per recent Household survey report under Census 2011 of Punjab,
state has about 2.6 lakhs operational cars in the state and RTI report
reveals that state has issued about 4.5 lakhs weapon licenses. This
clearly demonstrate that almost 90% of the car owners in the state own
a weapon now. At present per capita weapon license density in Punjab
is even more than, what it used to be In Chambal. Drug addicted
unemployed youth, equipped with weapon and having motor vehicle
followed by missing code of conduct for the society inviting another
disaster to happen in the state.

There are about 70,000 state police officials and 2000 on Traffic
Police duty. None of the traffic police personal equipped with weapon
in contrast to most of the car owners. At present there is no clear
cut guidelines are available with the state in terms of issuance or
renew of Number of weapon license. It all happens under political
pressure. Disturbed area tag has been removed from Punjab long back,
but that has nothing to do with issuance of weapon licenses Our cities
are getting choked due to missing traffic management further most of
the road space is allocated to motor vehicles and cars only. If it
will not be stopped now, anyone Indulging with car owners, is going to
face the fatal consequences in future. State immediately needs a
policy for issuance/renew of weapon licenses in order to control this
fatal consequences arising out of road rage.

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