A day after Punjab Cabinet Minister Om Parkash Soni’s “powerful bureaucracy” remarks, Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Monday ordered the constitution of another Consultative Group, under his leadership.
With this, the Chief Minister has set a total of nine consultative groups, aimed at assessing and expediting the implementation of the government’s flagship programmes. Earlier, when the Chief Minister had set up eight groups, he did not included Soni and another Cabinet colleague Navjot Singh Sidhu.
The new group, on Revamping of Medical Education, is headed by Medical Education Minister OP Soni, with Health and Family Welfare Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu and Public Works Minister Vijay Inder Singla among the members. Several MLAs and officers are part of the group.
Virtually unhappy with the change in his portfolio, the former Education Minister Soni on Sunday had lashed out at the state bureaucracy claiming that under his guidance, the Education Department (government schools) showed immense improvement.
He, mincing no words, had maintained that the bureaucrats were more powerful, but he would not succumb to any kind of pressure, be it the Chief Principal Secretary Suresh Kumar.
According to an official spokesperson, the group was to be set up along with the other consultative groups but was inadvertently missed out.
These groups have been constituted by the Chief Minister to plug the gaps in the implementation of his government’s key programmes.
Besides assessing the various programmes and schemes, these groups will, based on public feedback, suggest amendments. Amendments will be notified by mid-July as part of the Chief Minister’s effort to ensure that the benefits of the schemes reach the beneficiaries at the earliest, and make an impactful difference to their lives.