New Delhi: Days after taking oath at the ancestral village of freedom fighter Bhagat Singh in Nawanshahr district, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Tuesday declared a public holiday on March 23, which is celebrated as 'Shaheed Diwas'.


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'Shaheed Diwas' or the Martyr's Day is the anniversary of the deaths of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru.


The Punjab State Assembly also passed a resolution to install statues of Shaheed Bhagat Singh and Babasaheb Ambedkar in the Assembly.




After the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) decimated the Congress and the SAD-BSP combine and won 92 of the 117 Assembly seats on March 10, Mann had said that no government office will display photographs of the chief minister and instead, photos of Bhagat Singh and BR Ambedkar will be put on walls in government offices.


Earlier on March 19, Mann had held his first Cabinet meet and had approved filling up 25,000 vacant posts in various state departments, including 10,000 in the police force.


Mann announced the decision in a video message and said that the process of advertisement and notification for these jobs would be initiated within a month. He said the jobs will be given on merit.


The chief minister said 10,000 jobs will be given in the Punjab Police and the rest in various other departments, boards and corporations.


There will be no discrimination, no "sifarish" (recommendation) and no bribe, Mann added.



This "historic" decision would open new vistas of employment for the youth by providing jobs to them in the government sector through a transparent and merit-based mechanism, he said.


Unemployment, notably, has been one of the major issues that Mann's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had raised during the recently-concluded Punjab assembly polls and the party had promised to take the first cabinet decision of offering jobs after it came to power.


"In the coming days, we will also fulfil our rest of the guarantees (poll promises)," Mann stated.


The Cabinet also cleared the presentation of supplementary demands for grants for the year 2021-22 to be presented in the ensuing assembly session.


This decision would provide a budget for additional or excess expenditure incurred by various departments during the financial year 2021-22 to liquidate the pending liabilities, according to an official release.


Further, in accordance with the provisions contained in Clause (3) of Article 203 of the Constitution of India, the Cabinet also gave approval to present the Supplementary Demands for Grants of the Government of Punjab for the year 2021-22.



Earlier on Saturday, 10 AAP MLAs, including a woman member, were inducted into the Bhagwant Mann-led Punjab's Cabinet. Governor Banwarilal Purohit administered the oath of office and secrecy to the 10 ministers at a ceremony at Guru Nanak Dev auditorium in Punjab Raj Bhawan in Chandigarh.



The leaders who have become a part of the Bhagwant Mann's cabinet are Harpal Singh Cheema, Baljit Kaur, Harbhajan Singh ETO, Vijay Singla, Lal Chand Kataruchak, Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer, Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, Laljit Singh Bhullar, Bram Shanker and Harjot Singh Bains.


(With agency inputs)


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