All is not well with Badal Government, says Grewal

Chandigarh, May 15: The discontent amongst a section of ministers in the Akali Dal-BJP government in Punjab has come out into the open. The lava finally erupted at the a cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Thursday.

It was Science and Technology Minister Mahesh Inder Singh Grewal who took the initiative by saying that all was not well with the government. It is for the first time that a minister has commented upon the performance of the state government at a cabinet meeting, though several of them have been commenting upon its functioning in private for sometime. What is all the more significant is the fact that Grewal is close to Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee chief Gurcharan Singh Tohra, who represents the other power centre in the Akali Dal. According to sources, Grewal has urged the Chief Minister to have a special meeting of the cabinet to discuss the performance of the government. For him, the government started losing whatever impact it had made after the firstsix months. He trained his guns mainly on the bureaucracy and said even the MLAs were not being accorded due respect. He has asked the Chief Minister to tighten his grip and give out clear signals to the bureaucracy that the government means business. He came down heavily on the working of the vigilance department pointing out that under the present system, the cases could not be taken to its logical conclusion.