chandigarh hearing a public interest litigation pil seeking to restrain punjab minister navjot singh sidhu from acting in a tv comedy show the punjab and haryana high court on friday sought the state advocate generals opinion on the propriety of a cabinet minister appearing in the television programmethe court asked ag atul nanda what are your views on the propriety of a cabinet minister appearing in a comedy show the ag however remained noncommittal saying i am here to defend the state government on legal issues onlywhen the petition filed by advocate h c arora came up for hearing before the division bench headed by justice s s saron the petitioner had urged the bench to elicit the views of atul nanda who was watching the proceedingsafter the ags reply the petition was adjourned to may 11 to enable the petitioner the ag and the punjab government to address the hc bench on the moral as well as the legal aspects of the issues raised in the pilthe petitioner had stated in the pil that the propriety of the constitutional post of a cabinet minister requires that he should not participate in a comedy show on tv he cited the full bench judgment of andhra pradesh high court wherein it was observed that a chief minister should not act in a film and had further cautioned that such acting in films by a cabinet minister may also amount to abuse of his office acting in a comedy show by sidhu appears to be more serious than acting in a film the petitioner arguedsuch conduct on the part of sidhu who is punjabs minister for local bodies as well as cultural affairs would also give rise to conflict of interest as he is bound to enforce the provisions of rule15 of the punjab government employees conduct rules 1966 according to which the government employee cannot engage himself in private trade or business how can sidhu expect the government employees to avoid doing private business when he himself is doing such private business argued the petitioner