Satinder Sartaj's show held amidst flip-flop over approval

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Kapurthala, July 15

Hours before Punjabi singer Satinder Sartaj’s show ‘Mehfil-e-Sartaj’ was to be held in the campus of IK Gujral Punjab Technical University here this evening, the district administration had cancelled its conditional approval upon recommendations from Kapurthala SSP. But the organisers quickly got into action, fulfilled all the security issues flagged by the district police and managed to get the approval again just in the nick of time. After a flip-flop, the programme finally took off as per schedule this evening.

The various issues that were flagged by SSP Rajpal Sandhu primarily included a point that the organisers were not cooperating with the city police and were not sharing the requisite information being sought by them. Firdosh Production Limited Mohali and its manager Dr Sukhjit Singh had been handed out a list of conditions for the event.

Sandhu had written to DC Col Karnail Singh that the company officials shared that 15 security persons had been deployed by the company for maintaining discipline but the details like name of the company and the list of the staff was not being shared.

“Since as many as 800-900 visitors are expected, the number of security personnel deployed by the company was far too low. On being asked to strengthen the security staff, no satisfactory reply was received. No marking of entry and exit gates, route plans has been done. No provision of frisking of visitors has been made. No certificate of fire equipment installed inside the varsity auditorium has been furnished,” he had pointed out recommending that the conditional approval be cancelled and another date for holding the show be given.

The police had maintained that since it was not any social event and was purely a commercial one with tickets being sold out, the show company was expected to make all security provisions from its own end. Later as the DC cancelled the approval for the show, the company staff reportedly swung into action. They then approached the SSP, who gave a fresh report to the DC and finally the approval was granted again.