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Panchayat poll fiasco: Punjab govt wrongly punishing AG, says LoP Partap Singh Bajwa
Leader of Opposition (LoP) Partap Singh Bajwa claimed that after two senior bureaucrats were made scapegoats and suspended in a haste to hush up the matter, the AAP government is now wrongly punishing the state’s advocate general Vinod Ghai
Leader of Opposition (LoP) Partap Singh Bajwa on Sunday accused the Aam Aadmi Party-led Punjab government of sheer inability to fix responsibility after taking an undemocratic decision to dissolve panchayats.
Bajwa claimed that after two senior bureaucrats - Dhirendra Kumar Tiwari, principal secretary (water supply and sanitation) and financial commissioner (rural development & panchayats), and Gurpreet Singh Khaira, director (rural development & panchayats), were made scapegoats and suspended in a haste to hush up the matter, the AAP government is now wrongly punishing the state’s advocate general Vinod Ghai.
“I have already stated and I am sure it was CM Bhagwant Mann and panchayat minister Laljit Singh Bhullar, who were responsible for undemocratically dissolving the panchayats around six months ahead of its time,” he alleged in a statement.
He said the AAP government illegitimately suspended the two bureaucrats from the panchayat department who must be reinstated with immediate effect. The LOP said that as per the news reports, some sources in the office of AG revealed that in the panchayat dissolution case, legal opinion was not taken before the matter was taken up by the state cabinet.
“This revelation from the AG office proves that either Punjab CM or panchayat minister or both of them were at fault and they must accept their mistake of throttling the democratic institution before the people of Punjab. The documents relating to dissolving the panchayat were duly signed by the Punjab CM and panchayat minister,” Bajwa added.
