After 20 months, red-faced AAP govt in Punjab scraps Dhaliwal's Cabinet portfolio

Leaving the AAP government in Punjab red-faced, its NRI Affairs Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal had been heading a department that existed only on paper without allocation of staff for nearly 20 months.

This fact came to light in a gazette notification issued by the Chief Secretary on Friday, stating that the Department of Administrative Reforms, allocated to Dhaliwal, was non-existent.

Now, Dhaliwal will hold only the charge of the NRI Affairs Department.

“In partial modification of the previous Punjab government notification regarding the allocation of portfolios, among ministers, the Department of Administrative Reforms earlier allotted to Dhaliwal is not in existence as on date,” reads the notification.

The notification reads the decision to amend Dhaliwal's portfolio, on the orders of Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, had taken effect on February 7, 2025.

Previously, Dhaliwal held the Agriculture and Farmers Welfare portfolio.

In a Cabinet reshuffle in May 2023, he was allocated the Administrative Reforms Department. In another Cabinet reshuffle in September 2024, Dhaliwal continued with the “non-existence” department.

The Opposition BJP slammed the Bhagwant Mann-led AAP government and dubbed the decision as a “Kejriwal Model”.

Mocking the decision, journalist Kanchan Gupta on Saturday wrote on X, “Punjab had a Minister for Administrative Reforms but no Ministry of Administrative Reforms. AAP government headed by CM Bhagwant Mann was blissfully unaware of this till it erased the tag of Minister for Administrative Reforms. This is Kejriwal Model.”

The BJP's IT Cell head Amit Malviya called AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal “a charlatan who must be banished from public life.”

“You can imagine the crisis in Punjab government if it took nearly 20 months to realise that a department assigned to one of its prominent ministers never actually existed,” he wrote on X.

Former Union Minister and Akali Dal leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal said, “Things like this were happening in Punjab as it was being run by a remote control in Delhi.”