Punjab’s power couple calls the shots
ON TOP POSTS Newly appointed chief secy Vini Mahajan is wife of state police chief Dinkar Gupta, owes her rise to professional credentials
CHANDIGARH: The ascent of Vini Mahajan, a 1987-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, to the top position of Punjab bureaucracy is a story of many firsts.
Mahajan is the first woman chief secretary of the state. She is the wife of Punjab Police chief Dinkar Gupta. This is the first time in bureaucratic echelons that a couple is simultaneously serving as the chief secretary and director general of police (DGP), the highest administrative and police posts, in the state, and perhaps anywhere in the country.
Gupta, also a 1987-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, was appointed as head of the state police in February last year. He was empanelled by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) last month for the post of director general or DG equivalent at the Centre.
Another first is that both Punjab and Haryana’s chief secretaries simultaneously are women. In Haryana, 1983 batch IAS officer Keshni Anand Arora, who is not the first woman CS there though, currently holds the top bureaucratic position. Also, Mahajan will have more than four years as the chief secretary if she continues in the office till her superannuation in October 2024.
A career bureaucrat of 1987 batch and mother-of-two, softspoken Mahajan owes her meteoric rise to her professional credentials and varied experience in the field and at the Centre where she handled economic ministries.
An economics graduate from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi,
Mahajan did here postgraduation from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta, where she was placed on the ‘roll of honour’ and later also received the ‘Distinguished Alumnus Award’. Mahajan, a decisive and no-nonsense bureaucrat, had served in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) from 2005-12 during Manmohan Singh-led UPA government, handling matters relating to finance, industry, commerce, telecom and IT. Her father, BB Mahajan, was also an IAS officer of the Punjab cadre.
SUPERSEDES 5 IAS OFFICERS
Mahajan has been appointed as the chief secretary, superseding five IAS officers senior to her. They include KBS Sidhu (1984), Arun Goel, C Roul, Kalpana Baruah Mittal and Satish Chandra (all four from 1985).
Sidhu, the senior-most bureaucrat in Punjab, is due to retire in July 2021. Both Goel and Roul are currently on central deputation, whereas Mittal is additional chief secretary, cooperation, in the state government. Chandra, who has three months left for superannuation, is additional chief secretary, home.
KARAN AVTAR’S UNCEREMONIOUS EXIT
Karan Avtar Singh, who is due to retire on August 31, has been posted as special chief secretary (SPS), governance reforms and public grievances. Though Singh had apologised to the cabinet ministers in the presence of chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh on May 27 to settle the unprecedented run-in with the minister, his shifting did not come as a surprise to several of his colleagues in the state bureaucracy.
Congress ministers and MLAS, who called a truce as the chief minister stood by the chief secretary, were not happy with the IAS officer’s continuation in the top post. They were pressuring the CM to remove him and the recent
government notification to adopt the two-rule fixed tenure rule for IAS officers also riled them up.
Singh’s new posting as SPS after he remained the chief secretary for more than three years
has not gone down well with some of his bureaucratic colleagues who feel that he had just two months left for superannuation and should have opted for premature retirement.
TARN TARAN : Police on Friday rounded up four persons for questioning in the case involving the murder of four members of a family and their driver at Kairon village in the Tarn Taran district’s Patti sub-division.
Brij Lal, alias Dhattu (60), his son Daljit Singh, alias Bunty (25), two daughters-in-law Amandeep Kaur (24) and Jaspreet Kaur (28), and the family’s driver Gursahib Singh, alias Sabha (35) were hacked to death by some unidentified persons in the wee hours of Thursday.
The cops, however, have not identified the accused or zeroed in on the motive behind the killings so far. Police had claimed that Lal and his four addict sons were involved in drug peddling in the area, with nearly 50 cases registered against them.
Lal’s wife Ranjit Kaur, who died on May 22 in the Amritsar central jail, was also arrested in a drug case three months ago.
His two sons Bakshish Singh, alias Sonu (30) and Paramjit Singh, alias Pumma (24) are undergoing treatment at a drug de-addiction centre in the district for the last one month, said police.
The bodies of five, all of whom were attacked in the neck with sharp-edged weapons, were found in separate rooms of the house. Four children aged 1- 5 who were sleeping with their mothers at the time of the incident, were spared. Police on Thursday booked Lal’s son Gurjant, and five others for murder on the complaint of Nishan, who claimed to have been told by a kid that Gurjant was accompanying the assailants.