Chandigarh: In a shocking revelation, Punjab Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal was found to have been holding charge of a non-existent department for nearly 20 months. A recent gazette notification issued by the Punjab Chief Secretary confirmed that the Department of Administrative Reforms, allotted to Dhaliwal, does not exist.
The notification, which surfaced in The Tribune, read: “In partial modification of the previous Punjab government notification regarding the allocation of portfolios, the department of administrative reforms earlier allotted to Dhaliwal is not in existence as on date.”
Following this revelation, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann ordered a portfolio revision, stripping Dhaliwal of the defunct department. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader will now only hold the NRI Affairs portfolio in the Punjab cabinet.
Dhaliwal initially served as Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister but was reassigned in a May 2023 cabinet reshuffle. Despite another reshuffle in September 2024, he continued to oversee a department that had no staff, no meetings, and existed only on paper, according to unnamed sources cited by The Tribune.
