Chandigarh/IBNS: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab is facing the Opposition's heat after it was found a cabinet minister ran a department which was non-existent for the last 20 months, media reports said.

Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal was relieved of his earlier portfolio Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Department in 2023.

Dhaliwal was then given the charge of NRI Affairs portfolio.

Adding to that, he was assigned to the Department of Administrative Reforms, the portfolio he kept with himself after a cabinet reshuffle in September 2024.

But in a gazette notification, the AAP government, led by Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann, said the Department of Administrative Reforms was "non-existent".

"In partial modification of Punjab Government Notification No. 2/1/2022-2Cabinet/2230 dated 23.09.2024, regarding allocation of portfolios amongst the Ministers, the Department of Administrative Reforms earlier allotted to Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, Cabinet Minister is not in existence as on date," the notification read.

The BJP, which has just uninstalled the AAP government in Delhi, was quick to corner the Mann regime, which started in 2022 after Congress was voted out of power.

BJP IT Cell head Amit Malviya wrote on X, "You can imagine the crisis in Punjab government if it took nearly 20 months to realise that a department assigned to one of its prominent ministers never actually existed.

"Arvind Kejriwal is a charlatan who must be banished from public life."

Former union minister and Shiromani Akali Dal leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal wrote on X, "Governance @AAPPunjab style. Allocate non existent departments to ministers who themselves are ignorant of the portfolios they hold. All this is happening because ministers have no role in governance as the govt is being run in remote control from Delhi."