Back from Delhi, Punjab CM gets going

Rajmeet Singh
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, June 23

The current crisis in the Punjab Congress has set off micro-management of the Capt Amarinder Singh led-government by the party high command, if the slew of decisions taken in the past few days are any indication.

Ever since the brainstorming by the party high command to resolve the crisis began, the Punjab Cabinet in its recent meetings has taken important decisions on long-pending issues like regularising contractual safai karamcharis and clearing the pending dues of SC students.

Efforts on for Capt-Sidhu truce: Rawat

• Punjab affairs in charge Harish Rawat, who is learnt to have met Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday, said efforts were on to bring Capt Amarinder Singh and Navjot Singh Sidhu on the same page
• He said the party high command, after due consideration, had sought a status report from the Chief Minister on key issues
• Regarding the action-taken report on the drug cases, Rawat said the CM has assured of action in the coming days

Sources reveal the Chief Minister has promised time-bound action in the next one month in the SIT probe into the Kotkapura police firing case, as being demanded by dissident ministers and MLAs, including Navjot Singh Sidhu. “The written statement by Fatehjang Bajwa to decline the offer of the government job was also due to intervention by the party high command,” said a senior party leader. The state government was all set to implement a long-pending demand of waiving loans of landless farm labourers, he said. Minister Charanjit Singh Channi said the long-pending issues related to Dalits and poor were in the knowledge of the party high command and the state government was addressing them. Though the Chief Minister, during his yesterday’s interaction with the AICC-appointed Kharge panel, is learnt to have taken a voluminous notes of the decisions taken vis-à-vis the 2017 election manifesto, the panel on the basis of feedback from ministers, MLAs and other party leaders has spent time on discussing the way forward in the implementation of the pending or incomplete agendas like controlling the sand and transport mafia, bringing down the power rates, re-negotiating the power purchase agreements, visible action on the ground in the Kotkapura police firing case, besides other important issues. After returning from Delhi, the Chief Minister is learnt to have called a meeting of officials to prepare an action plan to implement key promises, as flagged by the Kharge panel.