In a shocking revelation, the Punjab Government has admitted that a department assigned to one of its ministers never actually existed. For nearly 20 months, Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal was in charge of the Department of Administrative Reforms, a portfolio that was recently discovered to be non-existent.
A government notification issued today confirmed the blunder, stating that the “Punjab Governor, on the advice of the Chief Minister, is pleased to make an amendment to the earlier notification regarding the portfolios of ministers with effect from February 7, 2025.” As a result, Dhaliwal will now only oversee the NRI Affairs Department.
Dhaliwal was initially given the Agriculture and Farmers Welfare portfolio, which was later taken away in the May 2023 cabinet reshuffle. He then retained the NRI Affairs Ministry and was additionally allocated the so-called Administrative Reforms Department. Even after the September 2024 cabinet rejig, he continued to hold the two departments. However, it has now been revealed that the Administrative Reforms Department never existed in the first place.
Sources indicate that no staff was ever assigned to Dhaliwal for this department, and no meetings were conducted under its banner. Despite repeated attempts, The Tribune could not get a response from Dhaliwal regarding the embarrassing oversight. This discovery has raised serious questions about the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government’s administrative efficiency and accountability.
Dhaliwal, the fifth senior-most minister in Punjab’s cabinet, follows Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, Finance Minister Harpal Cheema, New and Renewable Energy Minister Aman Arora, and Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Dr. Baljit Kaur. However, his appointment to a fictitious department has cast doubt on the competence of the government.
This is not the first controversy to hit the AAP-led Punjab government. In another scandal, Health Minister Vijay Singla was arrested by the Anti-Corruption Bureau within two months of AAP forming the government. Singla was dismissed by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann over corruption charges, with allegations that he demanded a one percent commission from development projects and tenders.
Mann, in a public statement, claimed that he had knowledge of Singla’s corrupt practices before any opposition or media reports emerged. There is an evident contrast here between AAP’s professed ideals of good governance and the reality of the matter; unlike previous governments that turned a deaf ear to corruption, AAP walked the talk. The chief of AAP and CM of Delhi paid rich tributes to Mann’s decision, calling it a proud moment for the nation.
However, while AAP boasts of its zero-tolerance approach to corruption, the revelation that a minister was in charge of a non-existent department for nearly two years paints a very different picture of governance in Punjab.
