Gurugram: What Haryana Minister Krishan Lal Panwar said while reprimanding a civic official at a public grievance committee meeting in Hisar Friday has since drawn considerably more attention than the complaint he was hearing.
Barwala Municipal Council Secretary Pragati Lakhlan had failed to report back on a document verification Panwar had ordered at a previous sitting. When she could offer no satisfactory reply, the minister turned to her and said, “Tu mahila hai, isliye chhod raha hu (I am sparing you because you are a woman).”
A hushed silence fell over the room. While Lakhlan looked uncomfortable, the minister added, “Itne din se shikayat par kya karyavai ki gayi (What action has been taken on the complaint all these days?”)
The incident took place after a question was filed by Barwala resident Rohtash Gupta, who had alleged at the previous meeting that municipal employees had fraudulently transferred his property to someone else’s name.
In the last meeting, Panwar had directed Lakhlan to verify the signatures on the relevant documents and send them for forensic examination.
On Friday, she had no update. Her explanation—that the complainant himself had not appeared during the inquiry, stalling the process—did little to placate the minister. But it was the character of the rebuke, more than its occasion, which drew criticism.
Also Read: Haryana Congress names fifth cross-voter in Rajya Sabha poll, Ratia MLA gets show cause notice
Not the first time
Friday’s episode wasn’t the first in Haryana.
Senior cabinet minister Anil Vij—who holds the energy, transport and labour portfolios—has been at the centre of two similar incidents involving senior women police officers in the past.
The more recent came in February this year, at a grievance meeting in Kaithal. A local resident accused an ASI from Kurukshetra district of land fraud. Vij immediately directed Kaithal superintendent of police Upasana to suspend the officer. When she pointed out that the ASI was from a different district and therefore outside her jurisdiction, Vij was unmoved. “Mera order saare Haryana mein chalta hai (my order is applicable to all of Haryana),” he told her.
When she persisted in explaining the jurisdictional constraint, he snapped: “Then get out of here if you have no power.”
The SP held her ground, clarifying that she could write to the DGP conveying the minister’s orders but could not herself suspend an officer from another district.
Vij eventually accepted this, though not before the exchange was filmed and circulated widely.
Afterwards, speaking to reporters, he insisted he had only been asking her to write to the DGP, not to suspend the ASI directly.
Over a decade earlier, in November 2015, Vij was at another district grievance meeting in Fatehabad, when he accused the police of failing to act against liquor smugglers and directed then SP Sangeeta Kalia to leave the room.
She refused. “I will not go out. You cannot insult me like this,” she told him. Vij walked out instead. The incident caused a political storm—and Kalia was subsequently transferred.
‘Demeaning women’s workforce’
Jagmati Sangwan, national vice president of the All-India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), said the conduct was part of a troubling pattern.
“It was deplorable and rather unfortunate that the ministers in the BJP government, one after another, were demeaning the women’s workforce with such comments,” she said. AIDWA describes itself as a “left-oriented independent” organisation.
“The minister Krishan Lal Panwar’s comments show that he was not looking at the Barwala Municipal Council secretary as a responsible officer, but was commenting at her work with a gendered angle,” Sangwan said.
“When senior ministers conduct themselves this way, the behaviour replicates itself at every level of the hierarchy—particularly in a state like Haryana, known for its patriarchal mindset,” she added.
A senior woman officer in Haryana, speaking on condition of anonymity, said what linked the three episodes was not simply a loss of temper but a specifically gendered manner of rebuke.
“Women IAS and IPS officers, or any women officers for that matter, are bound by service rules and departmental hierarchy. When ministers publicly dress them down in open meetings, on camera, before complainants and staff, it raises questions that go beyond the immediate provocation: about institutional respect for the civil services, about the conduct of elected representatives in quasi-judicial forums, and about what it signals to women in government service more broadly,” the officer said.
Panwar could not be reached for comment till Saturday evening.
(Edited by Prerna Madan)
Also Read: Haryana minister Anil Vij vs SP puts Rule 3 of All India Services to the test