Learn to rule; shuffling officers won't help: Amarinder Singh to Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal

CHANDIGARH: In a jibe at Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, Congress leader and his predecessor on the job, Amarinder Singh today said that he should better learn to govern as merely shuffling officers was not going to make any difference.

Referring to the massive administrative reshuffle carried out by the state government yesterday, which comes on the heels of the poor showing by the ruling Akali-BJP combine in Punjab in the just-concluded general elections, Singh claimed, "It looks like the Badals were trying to vent their anger on the bureaucracy and the officers instead of introspecting themselves."

The rejig of the civil and police administrative set-up saw as many as 37 IAS and four Punjab Civil Service (PCS) officers, including Deputy Commissioners of various districts, and 28 IPS officers and seven Punjab Police Service (PPS) officers, including Senior Superintendents of Police (SSP) of multiple districts, being transferred by the state government.

The SAD-BJP alliance could only win six of the 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab with AAP managing to bag four seats in the state while Congress took the remaining three.

Amarinder charged that there was no governance in the state and said that "the chief minister is seldom seen in his office as he is always busy roaming round the state and presiding over his favourite pastime of 'Sangat Darshan', which is sheer wastage of time and whatever resources the state is left with."

The ministers have been reduced to non-entities as the power is being wielded from within the Badal family, with the result that the economy is in a shambles and almost on the brink of bankruptcy, claimed Amarinder.