Captain Amarinder Singh-Sidhu tussle: Navjot loses local bodies ministry

CHANDIGARH: After days of speculation, the Punjab chief minister, Captain Amarinder Singh finally reshuffled portfolios of his council of ministers and stripped Navjot Sidhu of the local government and tourism and cultural affairs ministries.
Sidhu will now have to be content with power and new and renewable energy resources, a portfolio that has been with the chief minister after Kapurthala MLA Rana Gurjit Singh resigned over the mining scam in 2017.
With this, changes have been made to the portfolios of all the ministers due to reallocations of ministries.
Sidhu’s coveted local bodies portfolio goes to Brahm Mohindra, the former health minister. Sidhu’s tourism and cultural affairs ministry goes to Charanjit Singh Channi, who retains technical education, industrial training, and employment general. Channi’s science and technology portfolio has been taken over by Amarinder.
After the Lok Sabha elections, there had been talk of a rejig of portfolios after Amarinder indicated that he intended to change Sidhu’s department while blaming the latter for Congress’ patchy performance in urban centres of Bathinda and Sangrur.
CM to take control of governance reforms
Despite speculation that some of the underachieving ministers could lose their cabinet berths, no new faces have been added to the council of ministers.
There was hectic political activity in Punjab’s corridors of power on Thursday. The day began with Amarinder chairing the first cabinet meeting after the Lok Sabha elections. Sidhu preferred to skip the meeting and instead talked to a select group of mediapersons to claim that his party had actually done well in urban areas. The cabinet reshuffle was officially announced in the evening after the governor’s nod.
Mohindra, who was earlier handling health and family welfare, which now goes to Mohali MLA Balbir Sidhu, whose portfolio of animal husbandry, fisheries and dairy has been given to Tript Bajwa, along with higher education. Bajwa also retains rural development and panchayats.
Bajwa has been divested of housing and urban development, which goes to Sukhbinder Singh Sarkaria, in place of revenue, which goes to Gurpreet Singh Kangar, who is also handling rehabilitation and disaster management.
Manpreet Singh Badal continues to take care of finance, planning and programme Implementation but Amarinder has decided to take control of governance reforms. School education has been shifted from Om Prakash Soni to Vijay Inder Singla, who retains public works but hands over IT to Amarinder. Soni will now take care of medical education and research, freedom fighters and food processing departments.
After the rejig, Amarinder said it would help streamline the government systems and processes and bring more transparency and efficacy into the various departments. With Congress government having almost completed half of its five-year tenure, the CM said he hoped that the changes would re-energise his team and bring a freshness into the working of the major departments.
In addition to sports and youth affairs, Rana Gurmeet Sodhi will now also be in charge of NRI affairs, which was with Amarinder. Transport has been moved from Aruna Chowdhary’s basket and handed over to Razia Sultan, who retains water supply but has been divested of higher education. Chowdhary takes over the social security, women and child development.