Diplomacy, Sir Humphrey Appleby had said in the British TV series Yes Prime Minister, is about surviving until the next century; politics is about surviving until Friday afternoon.
Punjab minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal was notified – along with the rest of the state – on Friday what he might have known all along – that one of the departments he has headed for around 20 months does not exist.
A first-time MP from Ajnala, Dhaliwal was among the first batch of cabinet ministers to be sworn-in along with chief minister Bhagwant Mann in March 2022. He was, in the initial days, allotted the agriculture and farmers’ welfare department.
Fourteen months later, Dhaliwal was given charge of two departments – NRI Affairs and Administrative Reforms. The administrative reforms portfolio, the Punjab government now admits, does not exist.
In the cabinet reshuffle of September 2024, Dhaliwal had retained both departments.
A gazette notification issued by state chief secretary KAP Sinha informed about the change in the portfolio of the minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal.
“In partial modification of Punjab government notification no. 2/1/2002-2Cabinet/2230, regarding allocation of portfolios amongst the Ministers, the department of Administrative Reforms earlier allotted to Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, cabinet minister is not in existence as on date,” reads the gazette notification.
Sourced by the correspondent (TTO)
Dhaliwal remains a cabinet minister with the NRI affairs portfolio.
According to sources in the Punjab government, the administrative reforms department did not have any secretary or other officials and staff members, nor did the minister ever hold any meeting.
Neither chief minister Bhagwant Mann nor minister Dhaliwal took calls from The Telegraph Online for comment.
Leader of Opposition in the Punjab Assembly Partap Singh Bajwa, speaking over phone from Chandigarh, said this was symptomatic of what ails the AAP government in Punjab.
“You can guess for yourself what is going on in the state. They are making fools of themselves. After this admission should the chief secretary continue in his position?” Bajwa asked. “The Aam Aadmi Party is a bogus party, a party of liars. They have taken the people of Punjab for a ride.”
The BJP’s social media in-charge Amit Malviya called the AAP convenor and former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal “a charlatan.”
“You can imagine the crisis in the Punjab government if it took nearly 20 months to realise that a department assigned to one of its prominent ministers never actually existed. Arvind Kejriwal is a charlatan who must be banished from public life,” Malviya wrote on his ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) handle.