Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, April 8

The move by the new government to set up Guardians of Governance in less than a month after Capt Amarinder Singh came to power in Punjab has enthused ex-servicemen of the city, who feel that the commitment made to them at a pre-election rally here has been honoured rather quickly.As Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh has entrusted the job to his adviser Lieut-Gen TS Shergill (retd), not just the JCOs and jawans but even the high-rank Army officials have shown their willingness to be part of the programme. The city has more than 15,000 ex-servicemen, primarily concentrated not just in villages of the Jalandhar Cantonment area but also in city localities, including Deep Nagar, Defence Colony, Urban Estate, Ladhewali and Punjab Avenue.Former Deputy Director Sainik Welfare Lieut Col Manmohan Singh said, “I have been called by Lieut-Gen Shergill for a meeting next week. I think he wants to discuss the modalities of the programme with me, including the framework and the training part. I will be more clear on it whenever I meet him next.”He added, “There are about 31 officers of the rank of Major and above in Jalandhar, including six Lieutenant Generals, 17 Major Generals, 30 Brigadiers and about 150 Colonels and Lieutenant Colonels. As I worked earlier on Re 1 per month salary to impart training to the youth for entry into the armed forces, I and many other officers who are already drawing a good pension are ready to help the government make the system transparent and corruption-free. All that the members need to be given is ID cards, certain parameters and some training.”Another prominent ex-serviceman closely associated with Congress, Col Balbir Singh, opined, “There are about 12,730 villages of Punjab where Capt Amarinder Singh wants to have one ex-serviceman to take care of the implementation of his schemes. There will be some where there are more than 50 ex-servicemen and, thus, selection criteria will be required. There might as well be other villages where there are no volunteers. So, ex-servicemen from neighbouring villages will look after a cluster of villages in such a case. We do not know how many of them the CM will want to take initially. There will be some at village, block and district levels. We have already started working on it and are preparing a list of volunteers to be handed over to the CM. We will prefer ex-servicemen from lower ranks, rather than those from the officers’ ranks.” Jalandhar Cantonment MLA Pargat Singh, too, has said that the move has spread goodwill among the ex-servicemen of the area.“There are many employable ex-servicemen who will volunteer to work under the project largely concentrated in Dhina, Sansarpur, Mithapur, Nangal Karan Khan and other villages of my constituency. Being a disciplined force and having remained stickler for work, they will do monitoring of ongoing projects of villages rather quite well,” he said.