10 months into office, Amritsar MC Commissioner Gulpreet Singh Aulakh shifted

In yet another abrupt reshuffle, Municipal Corporation (MC) Commissioner Gulpreet Singh Aulakh has been transferred after just 10 months and 14 days in office. He has been replaced by Bikramjit Singh Shergill, who was earlier serving as the Managing Director of PRTC, Patiala.

This transfer marks the 12th change of the city’s MC Commissioner in the last three and a half years of the AAP government, raising serious concerns about instability in leadership and its direct impact on the functioning of the civic body. Residents say frequent reshuffles have hampered day-to-day administration and stalled several key development projects.

Aulakh, who joined as the MC Commissioner on October 14 last year, had earned appreciation for boosting the civic body’s revenue and pushing major projects. One of his biggest achievements was finalising the tender for lifting 11 lakh metric tonnes of legacy waste from the Bhagtanwala dump. The task had long been delayed due to lapses on the part of the company Averda, which ultimately admitted in writing during Aulakh’s tenure that it would not execute the work.

Notably, despite the frequent transfers under the AAP regime, Aulakh remained the longest-serving MC Commissioner in Amritsar over the last three and a half years. His transfer, however, has reignited criticism over the government’s handling of civic administration.

The series of transfers since March 2022 reflects a turbulent pattern. After the formation of the AAP government, Sandeep Rishi was shifted in April 2022, followed by the short and uncertain tenures of officers including Karnail Singh, Harpreet Singh Sudan, Kumar Saurabh Raj, Rahul, Hardeep Singh (as Joint Commissioner-in-charge), Ghanshyam Thori, and Harpreet Singh. On several occasions, the city remained without a regular Commissioner, or appointees did not take charge at all, further disrupting governance.

City residents argue that this instability has compounded their civic woes, from sanitation to infrastructure development. “Every Commissioner comes, makes announcements, and then gets transferred before projects see results. We are the ones suffering,” Pawan Sharma, a local activist.