CHANDIGARH: Punjab’s new deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, son of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, was Thursday allocated the important portfolios of home affairs, information and public relations, NRI affairs and sports.
The portfolios were allocated to Badal junior a day after he was sworn-in as deputy chief minister at Amritsar Wednesday.
Sukhbir is expected to formally assume office at the Punjab secretariat Friday.
This is an unprecedented event in India’s 60-year-old political history where the chief minister father will be his son’s boss, officially.
The home department will give Sukhbir control over Punjab Police and its vigilance wing which is probing several controversial cases, including those against former Congress chief minister Amarinder Singh and others in land deals worth billions of rupees.
Sukhbir has also been given the portfolios of water supply and sanitation, civil defence, non-conventional energy and sports and youth affairs.
Chief Minister Badal did not reshuffle departments of any minister except cabinet minister Gulzar Singh Ranike from whom the sports and youth affairs department was taken and given to Sukhbir.
The other departments allocated to Sukhbir were those the chief minister and Sukhbir’s brother-in-law Bikram Singh Majithia. held earlier.
Majithia, a cabinet minister in the Badal government till last week, quit his post to make way for Sukhbir to be inducted in the government. Sukhbir is married to Majithia’s sister, Harsimrat Kaur.