PUNJAB: AAP MLAs Gurmeet Singh Khudian and Balkar Singh were newly inducted as ministers by the Bhagwant Mann Cabinet in Punjab on Wednesday, May 31. At the Raj Bhavan in this city, Governor Banwarilal Purohit swore the new ministers to the office and to secrecy. Bhagwant Mann, the chief minister, was also present.

A 60-year-old legislator from Muktsar's Lambi district, Khudian. He was the "giant slayer" of the party who, in the 2022 Punjab Assembly elections, upset five-term chief minister Parkash Singh Badal on his own home turf by a margin of 11,396 votes.

Khudian, a rookie MLA, left Congress in 2021 and joined the AAP. Balkar Singh, 60, represents the reserved Kartarpur seat in Jalandhar. Singh, a retired police officer from the Punjab Police, joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in 2021. Singh is a rookie legislator as well.

Sushil Rinku, an AAP candidate, won the byelection this month from the Jalandhar Parliamentary constituency, where the Kartarpur Assembly seat is located. Out of the nine assembly segments in the Jalandhar parliamentary constituency, Rinku had won the most votes in the Kartarpur assembly segment.

It is the third cabinet expansion of Punjab's 14-month-old Mann government. The Bhagwant Mann governemnt added five new party legislators to its cabinet in July 2022, marking its first cabinet enlargement.

After Fauja Singh Sarari offered his resignation in January of this year, prominent AAP leader and Patiala Rural MLA Dr. Balbir Singh was sworn in as a cabinet minister. Inderbir Singh Nijjar submitted his resignation as a minister on "personal grounds" on Tuesday. Tuesday, Chief Minister Mann forwarded Nijjar's resignation to the governor for approval. 

After allegedly making a remark in support of Barjinder Singh Hamdard, the editor-in-chief of the Punjabi daily Ajit, Nijjar resigned. The vigilance office is investigating Hamdard for the suspected misappropriation of money during the construction of the Rs 315 crore Jang-E-Azadi memorial in Jalandhar.

The Mann-led government currently has 15 members, including the chief minister. The cabinet will have 16 members with the departure of Nijjar and the appointment of two additional ministers. The cabinet has a total of 18 slots. Balkar Singh and Khudian afterwards thanked Mann and AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal for their appointment as ministers in remarks to reporters.

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