Divested of education, Soni yet to join new dept

Friday, 14/06/2019

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CHANDIGARH: Upset over being stripped of school education department, Punjab cabinet minister OP Soni has gone into a sulk and still to assume charge of the medical education department allocated to him in last week’s cabinet reshuffle.

The state cabinet was rejigged by chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh last Thursday, but Soni is hot under the collar at being removed from school education and has not joined the new department so far, according to sources close to the minister.

He is the second minister to be miffed over the change in his portfolio. Navjot Sidhu, who is at odds with the chief minister for many months, has also not taken charge of power ministry allocated to him in the reshuffle.

Amarinder had divested Sidhu of local bodies department after publicly blaming his “inept” handling for the party’s poor show in urban areas in Lok Sabha polls.

The cricketer-turned-politician did not join his new department and approached Congress president Rahul Gandhi instead three days ago. Rahul has asked party treasurer Ahmed Patel to mediate between them. Sidhu has been incommunicado since. Both Sidhu and Soni are among the senior-most ministers in state.

Soni, who was inducted into the cabinet in April 2018, had first expressed his hurt at an exhibition on education held by a college in Ludhiana on June 9 where he accused the bureaucracy, particularly the CM’s chief principal secretary Suresh Kumar, of calling the shots in the state.

Asked about his outburst, the minister said he was loyal to the chief minister and the Congress but would not sell his conscience for anything. “I stand by each and every word I said and will not equivocate. I never bowed before bureaucrats in the past and I will not do that now. I don’t care about portfolio, but what was my fault? I did my best and produced results in school education in just one year,” Soni told Hindustan Times on Thursday.

Capt had left both Soni and Sidhu out of eight consultative groups he set up last week to review and assess the implementation of the government’s flagship programmes. After Soni’s statement, another consultative group was constituted under him later on revamping of medical education. The late move has failed to placate the minister, though.

The five-time MLA had started out as school education, environment and freedom fighters minister. He was divested of environment on November 21 last year and given food processing in its place, but Soni has not been handling files of the department or attending its official functions, said sources.