Gurminder Singh resigns as Punjab Advocate General; 4th to quit post in AAP’s 3 years

He added that AG’s term is ending on March 31.

Sources said that Gurminder Singh’s resignation was waiting to happen especially after the Bhagwant Mann-led dispensation, on February 21, asked all 236 law officers on its payroll to submit their resignation. Dispelling the speculation that the he too was asked to quit, Gurminder Singh had then said, “I am not resigning.”

A law graduate from Chandigarh-based Panjab University, Gurminder Singh, is a first generation lawyer, who started his practice in 1989 and was designated senior advocate in 2014. Among others he remained standing counsel for Medical Council of India, Dental Council of India, Union Service Public Commission, Punjab Vidhan Sabha and other boards and corporations of the state. He specialises in service litigation, constitutional and criminal matters and has appeared before the Supreme Court apart from high courts in Chandigarh, Delhi and Himachal Pradesh.

An official in the Punjab AG’s office had earlier told The Indian Express the contract of the AG and the law officers is for one year. However, the governments prefer not to replace them during their five-year tenure and the contract is renewed every year.

A source in the government, meanwhile, said that the AAP dispensation was not happy with the performance of the AG’s office especially after the government had lost several cases in the courts. The high court’s quashing of FIRs against former Congress minister Bharat Bhushan Ashu and another former minister Sunder Sham Arora in alleged scams had caused embarrassment to the government. Before that the government was also not able to defend its decision to dissolve the panchayats prematurely last year. The government had to withdraw its notification of dissolving the panchayats. This had also caused embarrassment to the state government. At that time, CM Mann had put under suspension two senior IAS officers blaming them for the fiasco.

Last month, the government removed 1993-batch IPS officer Varinder Kumar as the chief director of the state Vigilance Bureau, and attached him to the office of the director general of police. At that time also, senior officials had claimed that the move was linked to the embarrassment that the government suffered in Ashu and Arora cases.

When the AAP took over the reins of the state in March 2022, DS Patwalia was the AG. Within two days of new government taking charge, Patwalia resigned as AG. The government then appointed Anmol Rattan Sidhu as the AG, Sidhu, however, resigned just four months later on July 30, 2022. The same day, the government appointed Vinod Ghai, who stayed in the office till October 5, 2023. On October 6, the government had appointed Gurminder Singh as AG.