Sidhu resigns from Punjab cabinet over new portfolio
Monday, 15/07/2019
http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
CHANDIGARH: More than a month after he was removed from the powerful local bodies department, Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu on Sunday posted his resignation on social media, effectively closing a chapter in his protracted battle with state chief minister Amarinder Singh.
Sidhu, who refused to take charge of the power and renewable energy portfolio that he was assigned to on June 6, posted the handwritten one-line letter addressed to Rahul Gandhi as Congress president, on his Twitter account. Sidhu later tweeted that he would be sending the letter to the chief minister as well.
Amarinder, who took a meeting of the power department in Sidhu’s absence, is likely to accept the resignation, according to a close aide of the chief minister who wishes to remain anonymous.
The decision by Sidhu to resign from the Punjab Cabinet shows that the central leadership could not prevail upon either him or the CM to defuse tensions at a time when there is uncertainty over the party’s future following Rahul Gandhi’s insistence that he wants to step down as Congress president in light of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections debacle.
Sidhu’s resignation letter, dated June 10, was submitted to Rahul Gandhi four days after the Cabinet reshuffle. At the time, he tweeted a picture with Rahul Gandhi, his sister and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and senior leader Ahmed Patel. He went incommunicado and was seen in public over the last month in his home town of Amritsar and at the Vaishno Devi shrine.
The cold war between Amarinder and Sidhu has not abated since the cricketer-turned-politician went to Pakistan on the invitation of Prime Minister Imran Khan for his swearing-in ceremony last August. The visit sparked a controversy after Sidhu was seen hugging Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa. Amarinder chastised Sidhu for “demoralising” the Indian defence forces when political opponents from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) attacked him over the gesture. The tensions between the two escalated when Sidhu went to Pakistan for the groundbreaking ceremony of the Kartarpur corridor in November last year despite Amarinder declining to accept the invitation and advising Sidhu to do the same. Later, Sidhu’s remark describing Rahul Gandhi as “my captain” at a press conference at Hyderabad while campaigning for the state polls last November, further added to the tension between him as the CM, who is often referred to as “Captain” in an honorific reference to his days in the Indian Army. Then, just before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Sidhu’s wife Navjot Kaur Sidhu, who was denied a ticket from Chandigarh, accused Amarinder for opposing her candidature and for not asking Sidhu to campaign in the state. Sidhu did campaign in Punjab, along with Priyanka Gandhi, three days before the May 19 polls in a move that showed the clout he enjoyed with the Gandhi family. On last day of campaigning, he made another veiled attack at Amarinder Singh in Bathinda by asking people to “vote out those playing a friendly match with the Badals [of the SAD]”. Soon after the poll results, in which the Congress bagged eight out of 13 seats in Punjab bucking the national trend, Amarinder changed Sidhu’s portfolio, blaming his “non-performance” for the party’s weaker show in urban areas, which Sidhu denied by releasing his department’s report card and a dossier on party’s good performance in urban seats.
