Chandigarh: After a month-long battle, Punjab Congress president Navjot Singh Sidhu finally had his way over Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi on the appointments of the director general of police and the advocate general.
Channi announced the removal of the advocate general A.P.S. Deol Tuesday, adding that Punjab will soon have a new DGP too, in place of Iqbal Preet Singh Sahota.
“The cabinet has accepted the resignation of the AG and the state will have a new AG by tomorrow,” said Channi, addressing a joint press conference in Chandigarh with Sidhu.
On the DGP issue, Channi said his government has “sent a panel of all those officers who are eligible to become DGPs (to the UPSC) and once they clear the names of three officers from the list we will choose one”.
The former cricketer thanked the CM for the decisions taken.
Sidhu had resigned as party president shortly after Channi took over as CM in September, opposing the appointments of Sahota as DGP and Deol as AG.
Following several meetings with Congress general secretaries Harish Rawat and Harish Chaudhary playing peacenik, it had seemed on many occasions that the matters had been resolved. But soon, Sidhu would once again launch public salvos against Channi.
The latest rounds of meetings between Channi and Sidhu took place Monday and then Tuesday morning.
Asked if Sidhu was playing the role of the opposition leader, despite belonging to the same party, CM Channi said he “welcomed criticism”, and that it was his government’s duty to implement the vision of the party in the state.
Also read: It’s Congress vs Congress in Punjab, and this time Sidhu has nothing to do with it
Why Sidhu had opposed the appointments
Deol was appointed the AG after Channi took over as CM in September. However, his appointment was vociferously opposed by Sidhu on the grounds that Deol was the advocate of former Punjab DGP Sumedh Singh Saini, who is one of the accused in the Kotkapura and Behbal Kalan police firing incidents of 2015. Saini was the DGP when two Sikh youth were killed after police fired on protesting crowds gathered at these places, demanding justice in the series of incidents of desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib, considered to be a living guru by the Sikhs.
After repeated attacks on his appointment by Sidhu, Deol had handed over his resignation to the government, and last week, counterattacked the state Congress chief, saying he was interfering with the working of the government and his office.
Sidhu had reacted sharply to Deol’s statement, issuing a flurry of tweets against his working.
Mr. AG-PUNJAB, Justice is blind but people of Punjab are not. Our Congress party came in power with a promise to give justice in Sacrilege Cases, in which you appeared before the High Court for main conspirators/accused persons and made serious allegations against our Govt. 1/12 pic.twitter.com/YMjPrPBPCh
— Navjot Singh Sidhu (@sherryontopp) November 7, 2021
Sidhu had also opposed Sahota’s appointment as the DGP, on the grounds that the IPS officer had, in 2015, headed a SIT tasked to investigate the desecration cases and arrested two innocent Sikh youth who were later let off. Sidhu alleged that the two were tortured and asked to name innocent persons for the desecration.
Sidhu had alleged that AG Deol and DGP Sahota could not be expected to give justice to the people of the Punjab in these cases as both were “ethically compromised”.
(Edited by Shreyas Sharma)
Also read: Bargari, Behbal Kalan, Kotkapura — sacrilege cases at centre of Sidhu-Channi discord in Punjab