With Governor S F Rodrigues’s term coming to an end next month, the Centre is understood to be planning to revive the pre-Operation Bluestar administration model of Chandigarh with a bureaucrat of the rank of Chief Commissioner being in charge of daily governance of the Union Territory. Currently, it is the Punjab Governor who runs the show. It is proposed that the Chief Commissoner should be an officer of the rank of additional secretary at the Centre.

Government sources told The Indian Express that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is apparently keen to divest the charge of Chandigarh before the appointment of the next Governor of Punjab is finalised. The move also has support of Parliamentary Affairs Minister and Chandigarh MP Pawan Bansal.

At present, Rodrigues holds additional charge of UT Administrator with Pradeep Mehra, a senior 1975 batch AGMUT cadre officer, functioning as his Adviser. The administration of Union Territories is governed by Article 239 of the Constitution that empowers the President to “administer the UT through an administrator to be appointed by him with such designation as he may specify”.

Before Operation Bluestar in 1984, Chandigarh was governed by a Chief Commissioner, a senior joint secretary-level bureaucrat. The reins of power in Chandigarh were given as additional charge to Punjab Governor Arjun Singh after the Army operation at the Golden Temple complex, with a bureaucrat from the AGMUT cadre being appointed as Adviser. Incidentally, Arjun Singh’s name is again in the reckoning for the post of the new Governor of Punjab.