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Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

What really ails Punjab NRI Sabha—it’s a private society pretending to be a State agency

Punjab could draft an NRI Affairs Act constituting a statutory commission. But it means facing the charge that the state is creating a privileged class of absentee landowners.

The Punjab NRI Sabha has seen an institutional decline over the years—empty presidencies, rigged elections, stonewalled RTI applications, and NRIs carrying armed guards while fighting land encroachment cases. But there is a structural impossibility at the heart of this failure.

The NRI Sabha is not a government department. It is a registered society under the Societies Registration Act, 1860—a private voluntary association with the Chief Minister and NRI Affairs Minister holding ceremonial positions. It has no legal powers, no enforcement capacity, and no constitutional mandate. Expecting it to deliver expedited justice is like expecting a residents’ welfare association to override municipal law.

Punjab has attempted administrative fixes. When NRIs applied for the partition of agricultural land, the process was shifted from the tehsildar to the District Revenue Officer, bypassing the lower rungs to expedite matters. But the appeals hierarchy remained unchanged. Partition orders still lingered. The bottleneck didn’t disappear; it merely shifted.

NRI police stations were established in 2008 to handle diaspora complaints. But they operate under the same CrPC and IPC as any other station. No special relief is available beyond what the law permits for any citizen. Procedural tweaks cannot override substantive law.

The real punishment often comes from the process itself. An NRI implicated in a criminal case—rightly or wrongly—immediately faces restrictions on leaving the country. Lookout circulars are issued. Bail hearings stretch on. The process becomes the penalty, with the accused trapped in India while livelihoods........

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