Three killings in sixteen days in a single Punjab district — and Congress leader Sachin Pilot is asking the question Punjab residents are already asking themselves: who is in charge? The Congress general secretary and Chhattisgarh in-charge levelled a sharp broadside at the Aam Aadmi Party government on Thursday, October 22, calling the latest broad-daylight killing in Tarn Taran district a symptom of a state where fear has become routine.

A Tarn Taran Pattern That Is Hard to Dismiss

Tarn Taran, which shares a sensitive border with Pakistan, has long been ground zero for Punjab's most intractable security challenges — cross-border smuggling, illegal firearms, and organised crime networks that predate any single government. The district's geography makes it a pressure point; its recurring headlines make it a political flashpoint. Pilot's post draws attention to a cluster of three shootings within a fortnight, framing it not as isolated incidents but as evidence of a system in retreat.

'How are criminal networks and illegal firearms being allowed to flourish, terrorising people openly without any fear of consequences?' Pilot wrote, tagging INC Punjab and INC India — signalling the party intends to press the issue beyond a single social-media post.

AAP's Law-and-Order Promise vs. the Ground Reality

When Bhagwant Mann's AAP swept to power in the 2022 Punjab assembly elections, the party's manifesto carried an explicit pledge to dismantle the drug trade and restore law and order across the state. That promise was central to AAP's pitch to voters exhausted by decades of Congress and Akali rule. Four years on, opposition parties — Congress chief among them — are holding that commitment up against a spate of high-profile violence in border districts.

Pilot's critique lands on a specific nerve: he accuses the AAP administration of being more interested in 'post-incident damage control and protecting its public image' than in attacking the structural roots of gang violence. It is the kind of charge that is difficult to rebut with a press conference alone — it demands visible, durable results on the ground.

Congress Escalates Pressure on Punjab Security

This is not an isolated salvo. Congress leaders have made Punjab's deteriorating law-and-order situation a sustained line of attack against the AAP government, pointing to gang activity, targeted killings, and the continued flow of illegal weapons into the state as evidence that the administration has failed on its flagship promise. The party's decision to deploy a national-level figure like Pilot — rather than leaving the criticism to state-unit leaders alone — signals how seriously it is framing this issue ahead of future electoral cycles.

Punjab police responses to the recent incidents, updated crime statistics, and any forthcoming discussion in the state assembly will be closely watched as the pressure mounts. For border communities in Tarn Taran, however, the politics is secondary. Three shootings in sixteen days is not a statistic — it is a neighbourhood.

The real test for the AAP government is whether it can move from managing the narrative to changing the numbers on the ground — because in Punjab's border districts, the gap between those two things is widening in plain sight.