Summary:
JALANDHAR: With sacrilege incidents gripping the politics in the state, minister Navjot Singh Sidhu-headed local bodies department has issued a notification allowing municipal bodies to fund installations of CCTV cameras at religious places under their jurisdictional areas. Both the provisions pertain to use of municipal fund.“The state government does not want to leave the issue to managements of the religious places to install the CCTV. Rural development and panchayat minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa said that he had already issued directions to make such provision and officials were working on these. This notification would help to effectively cover all the religious places and these would act as major deterrent and in case of any act of sacrilege would provide crucial evidence against the accused,” said a senior police official.Meanwhile, sources said that rural development and panchayat department was also working to issue similar directions to enable the panchayats to spend money on installing CCTV cameras. It is learnt that similar notification was also being considered by the rural development department to make provision for expenditure for the purpose from the panchayat funds.The notification issued by principal secretary for local government A Venu Prasad on September 1 declared that expenditure incurred on installation of CCTV cameras at religious places in the respective municipal areas as a fit charge under section 82 (1) of the Punjab Municipal Corporation Act, 1976, and section 52 (1) of the Punjab Municipal Act, 1911..