Parampal Kaur Sidhu, former IAS & PCS officer, and the daughter-in-law of senior Akali Dal leader Sikandar Singh Maluka, resigned from her duties on Thursday. Her resignation this close to the Lok Sabha elections has raised speculations that she is likely to join BJP and contest the Bathinda elections, battling SAD’s Harsimrat Kaur Badal. She was to retire from office this October.
Sikandar Singh Maluka was considered to be a close aide of Akali Dal supremo, the late Prakash Singh Badal but was reportedly upset with the SAD for not giving him a ticket to contest from the Maur constituency. This would also be another important for BJP to add to their roster as they will be contesting the elections solo in Punjab for the first time since 1996.
Sikandar Singh Maluka is a senior Akali-leader, close aide of Prakash Singh Badal and was the education minister in the Akali government till 2017.
Who is Parampal Kaur Sidhu?
According to reports, Parampal Kaur Sidhu is a philosophy and zoology postgraduate who became the first woman block development panchayat officer (BDPO) in Punjab in the early 1990s.
In 2013, she worked as an additional project director in the office of the director general of school education, while Maluka served as the education minister. After a Cabinet reshuffle, Maluka was given the rural development and panchayat department portfolio, and Parampal became the district development panchayat officer (DDPO) in Bathinda in 2015. On December 1, 2015, she was promoted to deputy director in the panchayat department.
Two days later, her case was sent to the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) to be inducted as an IAS officer through the nomination route. During the SAD-BJP rule, she joined as a non-state civil services IAS officer on January 15, 2016, and her first posting was as additional deputy commissioner (general) in Bathinda.
Even though she joined in January 2016, she was allotted to the 2011 batch of IAS officers due to the length of her previous service. Sidhu is currently posted as the managing director of the Punjab State Industrial Corporation, and was to retire in October this year.