Within a fortnight after the Congress’ ‘rebel’ Cabinet Minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa demanded the removal of state Home Secretary among others for arrest fiasco of ex-DGP Sumedh Singh Saini, Punjab Government on Monday taken away the Home Department from the senior IAS officer Anurag Aggarwal.

Aggarwal, a 1987-batch IAS officer, has been replaced by a 1993-batch officer Anurag Verma as Punjab’s new Home Secretary.

Notably, hours after the Punjab and Haryana High Court had ordered the release of Punjab’s former DGP Sumedh Singh Saini on August 19-20 midnight, the state’s Jails Minister Randhawa had demanded removal of Aggarwal as state Home Secretary along with the state Advocate-General Atul Nanda, and Chief Director Vigilance BK Uppal over Saini’s “fiasco”.

Randhawa minced no words to dub these senior officials as “professionally incompetent”. “In view of the fiasco in Sumedh Singh Saini case, I urge Chief Minister @capt_amarinder to immediately remove Advocate General, Home Secretary, and Chief Director Vigilance, for their professional incompetence,” Randhawa had tweeted, tagging Congress former national president Rahul Gandhi and Punjab Congress president Navjot Singh Sidhu in his tweet.

Responding to Randhawa’s remarks, Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh had advised all Cabinet and party colleagues to check facts before issuing statements.  “I suggest they should discuss all issues, specially sensitive ones, either with me or on the @INCPunjab platform before going public,” the Chief Minister said in a tweet posted by his Media Adviser Raveen Thukral.

Notably, the Punjab and Haryana High Court, around Thursday midnight, ordered Saini’s “immediate release” by describing his arrest as “illegal”, just over 24 hours after he was arrested by the state Vigilance Bureau in a corruption and forgery case. Saini was released by the Mohali court at around 2 am on Friday.

It may be mentioned that Randhawa has all along been criticizing the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder over the unfulfilled poll promises, particularly the delay in action in the 2015 sacrilege and police firing cases.  He is among the senior Ministers who had backed Sidhu in his tussle with the Chief Minister. In fact, Randhawa had even offered his resignation to the Chief Minister when the discussion over the High Court’s adverse ruling in the Kotkapura firing case went ugly during a Cabinet meeting, months back.