Chandigarh, April 16
Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal’s changed “political focus” was reflected in the induction of five dalit MLAs and one Rai Sikh MLA as chief parliamentary secretaries.
In all, Badal inducted 11 more MLAs — eight from the SAD and three from the BJP — as CPSs and gave good representation to dalits wooing the traditional votebank of the Congress. With these appointments, the strength of the CPSs in Punjab has risen to 14 out of which seven are from the dalit community besides one Rai Sikh MLA.
The dalit presence includes Nand
Lal — Balachaur; Des Raj Dhugga — Garhdiwala; Sital Singh —Dharmkot; Bikramjit Singh Khalsa -— Khanna; and Avinash Chander — Kartarpur. The Rai Sikh community that lives along the Indo-Pakistan border will be represented by Sher Singh Ghubaiya (Jalalabad). All of them were inducted today. Two others from the dalit community, Mohinder Kaur Josh (Sham Chaurasi) and Sarwan Singh Phillaur (Phillaur), had been inducted a few weeks ago.
Among the others to be inducted today were Harish Rai Dhanda —- Ludhiana West; and Jagdeep Singh Nakai —- Joga. The BJP MLAs to be inducted were Arunesh Kumar Shakker —- Mukerian; Sukhpal Singh Nannu —-Ferozepore; and Raj Khurana —- Rajpura.
Later, justifying the appointment of the CPSs, Badal said youngsters had been given a chance to gain some administrative experience. Two of them, Bikramjit Khalsa and Avinash Chander, had been given a chance as they defeated Congress heavyweights, Shamsher Singh Dullo and Ch Jagjit Singh, respectively. Raj Khurana, who shifted from the Congress and joined the BJP in the run-up to the assembly elections, was an expected entry; so was Sukhpal Nannu as he is one of the two Sikh MLAs of the BJP.
When asked about the stand of the SAD since it had supported the filing of a court case challenging the appointment of CPSs during the tenure of the previous Congress regime, Badal said “that stand was correct then, now this stand is correct”. The Chief Minister went on to say that the CPSs would be allocated departments and ministries in the next three or four days. He said it was being examined whether the CPSs could see files concerning their departments. During the regime of Amarinder Singh several principal secretaries had refused to route their files through the CPSs or the parliamentary secretaries, citing the lack of a constitutional provision in this regard.
