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Rajmeet Singh
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, May 11
To pave the way to facilitate approval of the excise policy at the cabinet meeting scheduled for Monday, the government has asked Punjab chief secretary Karan Avtar Singh to stay away from the meeting for two hours.
As an interim agreement, it is known that senior officer Satish Chandra, who is the Home Secretary, has been asked to lead the meeting.
The ministers had previously decided to address the issue of the Chief Secretary and the pro-contractor clauses at the cabinet meeting with the Chief Minister. This would have embarrassed the Prime Minister and the government.
On Friday, Finance Minister Manpreet Badal, along with other ministers, left the meeting due to alleged comments by the chief secretary.
The sources said that after speaking to the Chief Minister about his concerns about the excise policy, ministers are likely to authorize him to go ahead with the excise policy.
Despite the fact that the Chief Secretary (CS) has been asked to stay away from the cabinet meeting, the charges of conflict of interest on his part have been made by the MLA Congress Amrinder Singh Raja Warring.
Warring turned to Twitter to question the CS about “his son’s involvement in running a distillery in Kapurthala as a partner in a liquor contractor.”
“The license to operate the distillery cannot be sublet, since the country’s liquor quota is only in the name of the licensee,” he said.
He also alleged that the contraband liquor belonging to the liquor contractor’s company (which is a partner of the CS’s son) was captured and then released.
Later, the Punjab cabinet meeting ended, with the ministers giving the go-ahead to the Chief Minister to implement the adjusted Excise Tax Policy.
The meeting ended, and two ministers reportedly said they would not attend any future meetings in the presence of the Chief Secretary.
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