Lame Duck Season for lone PPSC member begins
Kanwar Inder Singh/ royalpatiala.in News/ July 22,2025
Countdown begins for Punjab Public Service Commission’s lone member Harmohan Kaur sandhu alias ‘Babbu Tir’ as her term to going to end.
Harmohan Kaur Sandhu was appointed on August 20,2019 by the Capt Amarinder Singh led Congress government. The six years term of Harmohan Kaur Sandhu as member is going to end next month i.e on August 19,2025.
Harmohan kaur Sandhu, a writer and columnist is a daughter of Punjabi satirist Gurnam Singh Tir. She is better known as Bubbu Tir in literary circles.
The interesting part in her six years term was when Harmohan Kaur Sandhu was appointed Chairman-cum-Member of the commission as all the member seats are vacant and no member is appointed by the present government.
Punjab govt had recently appointed Major General Vinayak Saini, SM, VSM (Retd) as the chairman of the Punjab Public Service Commission (PPSC) on May 7, 2025. Along with Maj Gen Saini, Harmohan Kaur Sandhu is the only member working in the commission.
After taking the reins of Punjab, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann in August 2022 had reduced the number of members of the Punjab Public Service Commission (PPSC) from earlier existing 10 to 5 as the salaries, perks and other emoluments of those ten members were putting an undue burden on the state exchequer. Bhagwant Mann had said that the reduction is being done to make the functioning of the Commission cost effective.
Present government has not appointed any member of PPSC in its three and a half term but had appointed two chairmans including the incumbent one.
History of PPSC
Joint public service commission, the precursor of the Punjab public service commission, with its writ running from the Khyber pass to the Jamuna near Delhi, was born at Lahore on May 1,1937. In the wake of the partition, the Punjab public service commission re surged in February, 1948, at Shimla with its revised jurisdiction extending over the then province of east Punjab. following the merger of the states of Punjab and PEPSU, it shifted to Patiala on Nov.1st,1956. On 1st Nov 1966, its territorial jurisdiction again decreased due to the formation of the states of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh
