chandigarh nearly four years after punjab introduced the prevention of human smuggling act to make licences mandatory for travel agencies the state government has directed its top administrative and police officials to launch a crackdown on those operating illegallythe objective of the new rules was to rein in travel agents by way of imposing penalties and making them shell out reasonable compensation for people conned by thempunjab home secretary n s kalsi who issued the directive has asked officials to enforce the crackdown by ensuring strict compliance of laws under the act the measures include regularly updating and displaying a list of all licensed and registered travel agents and their regular physical verification at least once in a yearaccording to a report by the united nations office on drugs and crime unodc titled smuggling of migrants from india to europe and in particular to uk from punjab and haryana over 20000 youngsters from punjab attempt to illegally migrate to 57 countries every year meanwhile tightening its noose around illegal travel agents in the state the punjab government on friday directed all dcs and ssps to identify any unregisteredunscrupulous travel agents operating in their districts and take stern penal action against themas part of its drive against such unscrupulous agents the government has come out with a set of new guidelines and instructions to ensure strict compliance with laws and legislations governing the registration and functioning of travel agents in punjab the advisory effective implementation of law rules for regulation of travel agents in punjab expresses the state governments deep concern over unscrupulous personstravel agents carrying out illegal activities by giving false promises to citizens especially youth for getting them settled abroad by charging huge amountsto ensure compliance of rules governing the registration and conduct procedures of travel agents it has been decided that all registered travel agents would provide a receipt to all they provide a service to such a receipt would among other details include receipt number amount mode of payment name and complete address of the registered premises and the gst number as well it is also required that all registered travel agents should display their registered licence number prominently at their officesfurther all deputy commissioners have been directed to ensure that the district administrations web portal includes the details of all registered travel agents and also the details of their licence type of licence validity period and a highresolution photograph