Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on May 31 expanded his Cabinet by inducting two MLAs as Ministers.
Balkar Singh, the MLA from Kartarpur in Jalandhar, and Gurmeet Singh Khudian, MLA from Lambi Assembly constituency in Muktsar were inducted into the Cabinet.
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The Ministers took the oath of office and secrecy at a swearing-in ceremony held here. The oath was administrated by Governor Banwarilal Purohit at Punjab Raj Bhawan.
Ahead of the Cabinet expansion, the Local Government Minister Dr. Inderbir Singh Nijjer on May 30 resigned from the Council of Ministers on “personal grounds”. His resignation was sent to Governor Banwari Lal Purohit for acceptance by the Chief Minister.
In the year-and-a-half-old AAP government, three Ministers have seen their way out from the Cabinet including — Dr. Nijjer, Dr. Vijay Singla, and Fauja Singh Sarari.
In fact, the two instances had put the party in the dock. In May last year, the Chief Minister dismissed Dr. Vijay Singla, who was the then Health Minister, from his Cabinet for allegedly seeking “1% cut in tender allotment and purchase of goods related to the department”. Dr. Singla was later arrested by the Punjab Police under the Prevention of Corruption Act, and remanded in judicial custody for three days.
The Chief Minister publicly stated that Dr. Singla had admitted to his crime and asked the police to register a case against him. Dr. Singla was sent to jail. Later, he was granted bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court. Curiously, however, Dr. Singla has not been expelled from the party.
Similarly, this year, Fauja Singh Sarari, the then Food Processing and Horticulture Minister in the AAP government, who was embroiled in an ‘audio clip’ controversy surrounding a conversation allegedly between him and his close aide surfaced in which the duo purportedly discusses a plan to extort money from officials and transporters.
Interestingly, the party asserted that Mr. Sarari quit the post on account of personal reasons, even though it is believed that by accepting Mr. Sarari’s resignation on ‘personal’ grounds, the AAP attempted to find a ‘safe passage’ to get out of a tricky situation where dropping him could have invited a public glare.
