NEW DELHI: More than 300,000 military and Para-military troops are deployed in Punjab state to try two ensure safe elections on Feb.19, but their mission is nearly impossible.

‘Thirteen national and 117 state assembly seats are at stake in the territory where 12,000 people have died in a decade-long fight for an independent Sikh homeland of Khalistan

“More violence is expected in the north-western Indian state as the representative Sikh Akali Dal parties boycott the polls to protest the central government’s refusal to implement long-standing territorial and economic treaties.

Slate elections were last held in Punjab in September 1985, but the ‘Akal government hen elected was dismissed after 18 months for its inability wo control militancy.

‘Since then, terrorism has claimed ‘over 8,000 victims in Punjab 6,000 of the deaths last year at an average daily toll of 16.

Subsequent elections last June were postponed on the eve of polling, without adequate reason or justification.

Next month’s election provides Tithe succor for Punjabis as their traditional bonhomie and irreverent humor has been replaced by a grim determination to make it home safely before dark when the security forces retreat inside their ‘barracks and Sikh militants freely roam the sake decreeing who dies, pays ransom or signs over acres of land.

Home ministry officials privately ‘admit that Punjab is beyond control, conceding that a political

Situation has been turned into an administrative problem which for the last 10 years has necessitated the deployment of thousands of Para-military personnel, as well as the army, to ensure a fragile peace in which thousands have fled to the safety of bordering states.

And, although many officials believe elections are yet another tactic in a situation of diminishing ‘options, they are an untried one and likely to succeed only if the ‘Akalis participate, acquire a political stake in Punjab and tackle terrorism from the inside.

“A government emerging from an election in which Akali groups ‘have not participated would lack a representative character and not be in position to commit the state to any accord with the center” said political analyst.

However, through the electoral process the government hopes 10 regain an authority that has long ceased to exist in Punjab where kangaroo courts are held openly by militants in villages and where execution by an AK-47 rifle is usually the sentence for crimes like prostitution, adultery and excessive dowry demands. Petty crimes like stealing cattle and water ‘can also carry the death penalty.

For the past 13 months militants have dictated Punjab’s social, linguistic and moral tones. Since December 1991. Punjabi not English or Hindi, both national languages i the lingua franca of all state government offices, while the media, including the state-run radio and television, abide by the ‘militants “press code,”

“All liquor and meat shops and video stores and beauty parlors in ‘many towns have been closed for being “licentious” and most forms of entertainment banned, on threat of death, as unholy.

To demonstrate their strength, ‘Sikh militants defied 10 army divisions around 150,000 soldiers in addition to an equal number of Para-military forces by slaughtering 51 Hindu train passengers near the industrial town of Ludhiana last month in a macabre rerun of a massacre of 80 Hindu commuters ‘six months earlier.

‘There are about 9 million Sikhs in the Punjab, compared to 8 million Hindus or other groups.

And, to compound this volatile situation, Pakistan continues its proxy” war in Punjab by sheltering, arming and training Sikh militants, charges the Indian government has repeated to the Pakistanis and one which even the U.S. and British governments now believe are justified and have ‘guardedly conveyed as much to Islamabad.

Normally gregarious Punjabis dread discussing local affairs unless strangers are vouched for, as no one today is immune from extortion, death or harassment by either the police or the militants, Hundreds of innocent people are picked up by the police for harboring militants invariably at ‘gunpoint -and brutally beaten and tortured Many mysteriously disappear.

Article extracted from this publication >> February 14, 1992