3 Akalis, 2 J.S. Men in Gurnam Singh’s team

From Our Special Correspondent

Chandigarh, February 16

A five-man “United Front Ministry” for Punjab headed by Mr Gurnam Singh, former Chief Minister and Leader of the Akali Dal Legislature Party, will be sworn in at Raj Bhawan here tomorrow at 11 am.  Three of the new Ministers will be from among the 43 new-elected Akali legislators and the remaining two from among the eight Jan Sangh MLAs.

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Mr Gurnam Singh’s four colleagues in the new Cabinet are mentioned as: Mr Atma Singh, General Secretary of the Akali Dal, Mr Sohan Singh Bassi, MP who was defeated in the Dharamkot constituency in the recent mid-term poll from the Akali Dal and Mr Krishan Lal, MLC and Mr Balramdas Tandon from the Jan Sangh.

The Punjab Akali Dal Legislative Party held a two-and-a-half hour meeting at the Punjab MLAs’ hostel this evening. Among others it was attended by Sant Chanan Singh, President of the SGPC and two MPs, namely Mr Narinder Singh Brar and Mr Sohan Singh Bassi.

Mr Kapur Singh, Senior Vice-President of the Akali Dal and MLA from Samrala was absent from the meeting.  When contacted at his residence, he told The Tribune “I was given no information about the meeting”.

The Akali Dal Legislature Party today unanimously elected Mr Gurnam Singh as its Leader  and thus confirmed Thursday’s choice of the three-man sub-committee comprising Sant Fateh Singh, Sant Chanan Singh and Mr Bhupinder Singh, Chairman of the Akali Parliamentary Board.

 The Party gave full powers to the Akali High Command to choose new Ministers.  Soon after the meeting, Mr Gurnam Singh and Sant Chanan Singh held consultations between themselves and with Mr Kirpal Singh Chaksherwala, Senior Vice-President of the SGPC, and a few others to decide the members of the Ministry.

Mr Kapur Singh said he never received any agenda of today’s meeting in the evening, someone rang him up when the meeting was half-way through, to inform him about it.  But when he protested that he did not know what it was going to discuss, the other person banged his phone.  “I am told the new Leader of the party has been elected, although no formal proposal was made in this regard at today’s meeting,” he added.

Mr Gurnam Singh told reporters that it would be a “United Front Ministry” although no representation is given at the moment to the political parties supporting it, such as the SSP and PSP.

Most of the Akali MLAs and their hundreds of supporters descended on Chandigarh this afternoon to press their claims for inclusion in the Ministry.

At the Akali Dal Legislative Party meeting, Mr Gurnam Singh and Sant Chanan Singh stressed the need for unity in Party ranks.  They asked the members not to have hunger for office rather they should have service as their ideal so that the State could be made more prosperous.

CM-Designate wants early arbitration 

Chandigarh, Feb. 16 (UNI) —One of the first tasks of the popular Government of Punjab will be to press Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to give her award over Chandigarh and P . a l cre

complex.

Chief Minister designate, Gurnam Singh told the Akali Legislative Party here this afternoon that he would not allow the Chandigarh issue to be hang on.

Chandigarh, he said, belonged to Punjab and Prime Minister was to give her award on this issue.  The matter, he added, had been referred to the Prime Minister for arbitration.