DW BUREAU / Chandigarh Close on the heels of the killing of Punjabi singer Sidhu Moosewala by the Goldy Brar- Lawrence Bishnoi gang and a large number of politicians as well as businessmen receiving threat and extortion calls from gangsters, the AAP Government in Punjab is set to bring a bill in the State Assembly to enact the Punjab Anti Gangsters Act (PAGA) with a view to crackdown on gangsters and organised crime, it is learnt. Top sources informed Daily World on Tuesday that the draft bill which is on the line of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) has been given final touches and the Government could soon bring it before the Cabinet for introducing the bill in the Assembly. The Government of Punjab has been mulling the idea for the past six years to enact a strong law to deal with the gang culture prevalent in the State, but each time it was discussed in the State Cabinet meetings during the SAD-BJP regime in 2016 and during the previous Capt Amarinder regime in 2017 and 2019, a move to enact the Punjab Control of Organised Crime Act (PCOCA) met with stiff opposition from some of the Cabinet ministers. While the State Cabinet had agreed in the past that such a stringent law was the need of the hour to combat organised crime and that the PCOCA could help rein the gangsters, drug mafia and hardcore criminals, some ministers had objected to enacting such a law, saying that the provisions of the proposed Act could be misused by the governments to fix their opponents, including political adversaries. Sources said that the proposed PAGA has been drafted after certain changes in the earlier proposed PCOCA ? according to which a statement before a Superintendent of Police (SP) rank official would be admissible before the court. The proposal to enact PCOCA was first discussed in August 2016 by the then Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal but the same was not agreed upon some Cabinet ministers. In 2017, the Capt Amarinder Government again decided to enact PCOCA in which the provision of a statement before SP being admissible in court was amended but it was suggested that an SSP rank officer would record a statement under the law and that would be sent to an IG rank officer for invoking the PCOCA. (editor@dailyworld.in)