Badal calls for decongesting over crowded jails

Chandigarh, May 1 (UNI) Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal who has spent a few years of his long political carrier behind bars, today called for modernising and upgrading the entire jail network in the state.

"Special steps need to be taken to decongest the over crowded jails", he said while presiding over a special meeting to review the conditions of prisons in the state.

Calling for a comprehensive recaste of the state policy on jails and jail inmates, he said that prisons should be treated not as punitive centers but as schools for reform.

"I have a special romance with jails and i doubt if anyone in the country knows about jails more intimately than myself.

Perhaps, I am the only person to have constructed a jail, where i became the first prisoner", he said at the meeting.

Special focus at the meeting were on jails at Nabha and Kapurthala.

Prominent amongst those who were present in the meeting included Jails Minister Hira Singh Gabria, Chief Secretary R I Singh, Principal Secretary Home B C Gupta and other senior officers of the Home and the Jails department.

UNI