TO BE PARTY’S STAR CAMPAIGNER
Friday, 29/07/2016
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NEW DELHI: Former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lawmaker Navjot Singh Sidhu is likely to join the Aam Aadmi Party on August 14 and plunge into the campaign for the Punjab assembly elections from the next day, party sources said.
The cricketer-turned- politician who stunned his party on July 19 by suddenly resigning from the Rajya Sabha, to which he had been nominated just two months ago, will be one of the AAP’s chief campaigners in Punjab. He will not be named its chief ministerial candidate, a member of the party’s top body, AAP’s political affairs committee (PAC) told Hindustan Times.
Sidhu, who is right now in Mumbai, was not available for comment. The move is seen as a symbiotic boost for the AAP on one side and the three-time Amritsar MP on the other.
For days after he quit the Rajya Sabha, Sidhu remained incommunicado. On the day of his resignation, his wife Navjot Kaur Sidhu – who is a BJP MLA in Punjab and chief parliamentary secretary – said it implied he had quit the party. When Sidhu finally surfaced and made a brief statement to the media on July 25, he did not say he had quit the BJP nor clarify on where he was headed. He used the opportunity to say that quit because he was asked to stay away from Punjab.
AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal tweeted after Sidhu’s July 24 press conference: “Sidhu wud hv spoken against drugs, if he went to Punjab. BJP prevented him. Who was it trying to protect? (sic).” SIDHU WILL GO INTO OBLIVION: BADAL BARNALA: Chief minister Parkash Singh Badal has said Navjot Singh Sidhu will go into oblivion like ex-CM Surjit Singh Barnala and ex-finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal did, after they quit their parties. He was speaking during sangat darshan at Tapa near Bhadaur.
