Fissures among ministers over boycotting Punjab chief secy

CHANDIGARH: A week after a “unanimous” call was given by the Punjab cabinet to boycott the meetings attended by chief secretary Karan Avtar Singh, cracks surfaced in the council of ministers on Monday with three attending a video conference in which the senior officer was present.

The meeting called to review the Covid-19 arrangements in the wake of the lockdown 4.0 was chaired by chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh, with Balbir Singh Sidhu (health ), Bharat Bhushan Ashu (food and civil supplies) and OP Soni (medical education) being part of it.

Also present in the meeting were Kuljit Nagra, the CM’S political adviser and Fateghgarh Sahib MLA, and Congress MLAS Kuldeep Vaid, and Surinder Dabar. Karan Avtar Singh was accompanied by additional chief secretary (home) Satish Chandra and additional chief secretary (governance reforms and public grievances) Vinni Mahajan.

The call to boycott the chief secretary by the ministers was given on May 11 by passing a resolution, after the officer had a spat with three senior ministers — Manpreet Singh Badal (finance), Charanjit Channi (technical education) and Sukhjinder Randhawa (jails and cooperation) over the issue of state excise policy.

To avoid an embarrassment, the government had appointed

Satish Chandra as cabinet secretary of the meeting of the council of ministers on May 11. The next day, Karan Avtar was relieved of the charge of finance commissioner (taxation) by the state government.

This was followed by a strong demand by Congress’ Gidderbaha MLA Amrinder Singh Raja Warring to remove Karan Avtar as chief secretary, with many ruling party MLAS supporting him. Warring even had levelled allegation of conflict of interest against the officer.

The ministers who attended Monday’s meeting said they didn’t have any issue with the chief secretary being part of it.

“There was no point of boycotting the meeting chaired by the CM himself. The issue has already caused a lot of embarrassment to the state government,” a minister, who wished not to be quoted, said.

“We should leave the issue to the CM,” another minister said.