CHANDIGARH: United Kingdom has offered technical assistance to Punjab police in the enforcement of the drug control measures launched by the Captain Amarinder Singh government, while evincing keen interest to scale up business engagement with the north Indian state.
Punjab police have been under attack from several quarters following unsolved cases of Maur terror attack, Pathankot security lapses, Nabha jailbreak, 18 broad daylight gangwars and no headway into assassinations of several top Hindu leaders, including RSS Punjab vice-president Brigadier V P Gagneja (retired) and Namdhari secretary head Mata Chand Kaur, forcing Amarinder to take new police reforms.
The decision was announced by Amarinder on Tuesday following a meeting Punjab chief minister British deputy high commissioner to India Andrew Ayre.
It was decided at the meeting that the chief of the Special Task Force (STF) on drugs would meet British enforcement experts to discuss cooperation in fighting the drugs menace in Punjab, in view of the smuggling of drugs into and out of India to other countries.
Several NRIs are wanted from Canada in the Punjab Rs 6000-crore synthetic drug racket. Sources in the Punjab government said that UK fears that drug epidemic in Punjab may lead to drug cartels in the UK as well.
The UK officials and Amarinder also discussed law and order problems and the financial crisis facing Punjab, with the Captain apprising the British envoy of the work done by his government to tackle the same.
The British envoy also offered assistance to Punjab in the training and modernization of the police force, as well as in handling cyber crime, with the two sides agreeing to explore mutual cooperation across a wide range of subjects, including law and order, industrial development, agriculture, dairy farming, animal sex embryo transfer.
Ayre invited Captain to visit UK to meet industrialists for attracting investments to the state. Amarinder also suggested working together in the fields of urban management, civil services, transportation in big cities, among other areas.
The British envoy said his government was looking to raise Punjab to the highest category in terms of business cooperation, for which the two sides could identify several important areas. Noting that his government was in the process of eliminating red tapism and promoting ease of doing business in the state, the chief minister directed officials of his government to arrange a meeting with British officials to identify areas of mutual cooperation.