Data version control (DVC) commands not working ---> TypeError: public() got an unexpected keyword argument 'SEP'

All of a sudden, dvc has stopped functioning. Any command typed fails and throws an exception. example. dvc remote list results in -

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/dev2/.local/bin/dvc", line 5, in <module>
    from dvc.main import main
  File "/home/dev2/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/dvc/main.py", line 6, in <module>
    from dvc import analytics
  File "/home/dev2/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/dvc/analytics.py", line 16, in <module>
    from dvc.lock import Lock, LockError
  File "/home/dev2/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/dvc/lock.py", line 8, in <module>
    import flufl.lock
  File "/home/dev2/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/flufl/lock/__init__.py", line 3, in <module>
    from flufl.lock._lockfile import (
  File "/home/dev2/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/flufl/lock/_lockfile.py", line 54, in <module>
    public(SEP=SEP)
TypeError: public() got an unexpected keyword argument 'SEP'
 

Any suggestions will be of great help.