Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said that the matter of inappropriate text was resolved. (Source: File Photo)
A day after a Punjab Cabinet minister, accused of sending an “inappropriate text” to a woman \government official, denied having sent any such message, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh Wednesday said that the matter was brought to his notice and resolved “to the satisfaction of the officer”.
In a statement issued from Tel Aviv, Amarinder was quoted as saying that the matter relating to reported objectionable message of a minister to a woman government official had been taken seriously and, to the best of his knowledge, resolved to the officer’s satisfaction.
Amarinder was responding to a news report carried in The Indian Express about a Cabinet minister being accused of sending text message to a woman official at an inappropriate time. The minister had allegedly sent her texts earlier, and she reportedly warned him against it. He had stopped for some time, but she decided to complain after a late-night text more than a month ago.
The opposition on Wednesday took up the issue and demanded that the CM should disclose the name of the accused minister and drop him from the Cabinet. The CM, however, did not name the minister in his statement.
“The matter was brought to my notice some weeks ago and I had asked the minister to apologise and sort it out with the officer. I understand he had done so to the satisfaction of the officer and thus the matter was resolved,” said the Chief Minister, after he saw the media reports regarding the incident, said the government statement.
The minister, however, had told The Indian Express on Tuesday that he had never sent any messages to a woman official. He had also said that no complaint had been lodged against him by any woman official.
In a statement, president of the AAP’s women’s wing, Raj Lali Gill, and its co-president, Jiwanjot Kaur, asked CM Amarinder Singh to take immediate action against the minister. While demanding the concerned minister’s sacking, AAP leaders said that such an immoral act by a minister cannot be tolerated.
CM seeks Israel cooperation in recycling water
“Impressed with the fact that 95 per cent of sewerage water was being recycled for agriculture in Israel”, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Wednesday sought the country’s cooperation in recycling sewerage water in five major cities of the state.
A government statement said the Chief Minister held extensive talks in Jerusalem with Israel’s Minister of Energy and Water Resources Dr Yuval Steinitz on the issue of water management to boost water conservation in Punjab. The CM discussed depleting water table caused by melting glaciers.