‘Nothing of this sort’, says APS Deol on reports of his resignation as Punjab AG

Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 1

Confusion continues to prevail over the issue of senior advocate APS Deol’s resignation from Punjab Advocate-General’s post. 

Deol, who refused to attend to phone calls in the morning amidst reports of his resignation, in the evening said “there was nothing of this sort”.

“Neither is there any resignation, nor any talk about it. The Chief Minister, too, has not talked about it anywhere and nothing of this sort has come out from the Chief Minister’s office. The speculations keep continuing. Sometimes some pressures are built, but there is nothing of this sort,” Deol asserted.

Sources in Deol’s office in the morning, on the other hand, had claimed that the senior advocate had handed over his resignation to the Chief Minister. A senior government functionary in the CMO said as and when the resignation of the AG comes, it would be tabled in the Cabinet before being forwarded to Punjab Government.

Deol was appointed after the post fell vacant following Atul Nanda’s resignation soon after Capt Amarinder Singh stepped down as the Chief Minister. His appointment had generated debate since the beginning as he was, at one point of time, the counsel for former top cop Sumedh Singh Saini and IG Paramraj Singh Umaranangal, both accused in the Behbal Kalan police firing case.

The appointment, though a matter of surmises since long, had come as a surprise as incidents of sacrilege and subsequent police firing in Faridkot district’s Kotkapura and Behbal Kalan in 2015 had always been considered politically sensitive.

It had also led to a legal debate on the issue of conflict of interest primarily on the ground that Deol, being Saini and Umaranangal’s counsel, would neither be able to appear nor advise the State in their cases and related matters.

In an attempt to settle the storm, senior advocate RS Bains was appointed special public prosecutor for the politically sensitive sacrilege matters. The Punjab government, subsequently, told the Punjab and Haryana High Court that Bains would not appear as the special prosecutor before the trial court in cases related to firing incidents in Punjab’s sacrilege cases.