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The Cabinet meeting was called a few hours after Manpreet Badal and Channi met the CM at the latter’s farm house on Monday.

The Indian Express

Chief Secy vs Punjab ministers: All eyes on Cabinet today

The Cabinet meeting was called a few hours after Manpreet Badal and Channi met the CM at the latter’s farm house on Monday.

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A day after CM Amarinder Singh holding a lunch meeting with Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal and Technical Education Minister Charanjeet Singh Channi to thaw the tension between ministers and Chief Secretary Karan Avtar Singh, all eyes are on the Cabinet meeting scheduled on Wednesday.

The Cabinet meeting was called a few hours after Manpreet Badal and Channi met the CM at the latter’s farm house on Monday. The notice of the meeting was issued by none other than the Chief Secretary himself.

He had not attended the last Cabinet meeting after pressure from ministers who had declared that they would boycott any meeting in his presence.

The meeting is being held at Punjab’s Civil Secretariat on Wednesday and Amarinder, who has attended all meetings through video conferencing amid the pandemic, is likely to be a part of the meeting in person given the urgency of the situation.

After the row between the CS and the ministers began, Amarinder has thrown his weight behind his top-most bureaucrat, an IAS officer he had handpicked after taking over the reins of the state.

Sources said the government was planning to have a pre-Cabinet meeting in which the Chief Secretary and all other bureaucrats would not be present. The issue will be brought up in the pre-Cabinet about the CS. If the ministers agree then CS will be called in the meeting.

“He may be asked to regret whatever happened in the earlier meeting in which the ministers walked out on him,” a functionary, in the know of things, told The Indian Express.

While aides of Chief Minister already claim that everything was settled as Manpreet Badal “had told CM that he would go along with whatever he wanted,” the FM is on record that he has told the CM that he would rather let the Cabinet decide the fate of the CS as the boycott was announced by the Cabinet unanimously.

“The CS retires in August and the government is preparing to appoint him as chairman of Punjab State Water Regulatory Authority. “The promise was made to him long ago. Let us see,” a government functionary said.

Out of 16 ministers in Amarinder’s Cabinet, three have already attended a meeting with CS after declaring the boycott. Amarinder’s aide Rana Gurmeet Sodhi is learnt to be working to placate Channi, along with Panchayats and Rural Development Minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa.

However, Bajwa’s meeting with Channi had resulted him in Channi’s outburst who had alleged that Bajwa had threatened him of reopening a case of an IAS officer’s complaint of sending her an inappropriate text.

Effectively, Manpreet, Channi and Jails Minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa have been taking up cudgels against the CS. While Amarinder met Randhawa along with PPCC president Sunil Kumar Jakhar on the issue, it remains to be seen whether the trio will stick to their guns in Wednesday’s Cabinet or decide to bury the hatchet.

Manpreet Badal was the first one to walk out on the CS accusing him of “misbehaviour” in a meeting on giving relief to liquor contractors. Channi had followed him and Randhawa had accused the bureaucracy of causing loss to the state exchequer. He had even flung some papers on the floor in the meeting before walking out. All other ministers had followed suit.

Most of the ministers have been privately accusing the bureaucracy of running the show in the state with Jakhar echoing their sentiment publicly.