Balwant Ramoowalia in Yuba City on Punjabi TV Progam
Lets uproot "corruption" from India, and honor our country, education and values.

Yuba City, July 24, 2006
NRI press

Interview of Balwant S. Ramoowalia was boadcast on Punjabi TV Program "Yaadan Punjab Diyan" by Ranjit kandola. Mr. Kandola is running TV show in Yuba city, California since 1998 and now expanding it from October this year and new coverage area will be -- chico, yuba city, sacramento, stockton, modesto, tracy.

Ramoowalia's Lok Bhalai Party, a state political party concerned with the social welfare of Punjab's disenfranchised, has taken more than 1,100 abandoned-bride cases to court, or found other paths to justice for the women and their families. "The phenomenon has become so rampant that it is equivalent to organized crime," Ramoowalia said.

Ramoowalia, a former federal minister, has been known to send police to the homes of Indian families to impress upon them the nature of their Canadian kin's misdeeds.

Ramoowalia complains that no religious leader has spoken out on behalf of the abandoned brides, who are almost exclusively Sikhs, the faith that dominates in Punjab. And he bemoans the lack of secular will.

"No religious leader, no political leader," he says. "It's a very sad state of affairs."

There is no international law governing marriages, and both India and Canada tend to their own matters of civil law.

But Ramoowalia says fraudulent marriages amount to a crime, and bilateral agreements, including extradition, are necessary.

The party president says it saddens him that women become pariahs in their own villages and towns, where a woman who has lost her virginity is considered damaged goods, not worthy of remarriage.

Most of the NRIs appreciate his efforts to clean corruptions and help abandoned-bride cases in Punjab. This is good news for him that more and more NRIs are joining his party.

Balwant Ramoowalia