Chandigarh: Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu Friday appeared to lose the latest round of his tug-of-war with Chief Minister Amarinder Singh. While Sidhu’s adviser Malvinder Singh Mali, one of two team members facing heat for their controversial comments, resigned Friday, Amarinder found “a big breather” in a show of strength by Congress MLAs and MPs.
Cabinet minister Rana Gurmit Sodhi, an old loyalist of Amarinder, organised a dinner for the chief minister’s supporters Thursday. According to Raveen Thukral, the CM’s media adviser, as many as 58 MLAs were at the dinner. The party has 80 MLAs in the state’s 117-member assembly. Eight Congress MPs from the state were in attendance too.
‘I’d invited like-minded @INCPunjab MPs & MLAs for dinner. 58 MLAs & 8 MPs graciously accepted my invitation & expressed the confidence that the party would win the 2022 polls under the leadership of @capt_amarinder. The journey has started today’: @iranasodhi pic.twitter.com/HkHYIJpzU7
— Raveen Thukral (@RT_MediaAdvPBCM) August 26, 2021
Mali’s resignation — seen as a move by the Sidhu camp to control the damage wrought by his comments — has been perceived by Amarinder’s supporters as a victory amid their fight for supremacy in the Punjab Congress ahead of next year’s polls.
“The dinner show-of-strength, the largest out of the 80 Congress MLAs (in the 117-seat assembly), is a big breather for Amarinder in the ongoing battle. But is this the turning point? Only time will tell,” said a senior party leader.
The dinner came at the end of a week that saw Sidhu allegedly mobilise MLAs and ministers against Amarinder. On Wednesday, over three dozen MLAs led by four ministers met Congress Punjab in-charge Harish Rawat to raise their “grievances” against Amarinder.
Speaking to ThePrint later, however, Rawat had said the 2022 Punjab elections would be fought under the leadership of Amarinder, even as he added that grievances of all sections of the state organisation will be addressed.
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‘Befitting reply’
On the backfoot, Sidhu reportedly sought to issue a warning to the Congress at a public meeting in Amritsar Friday. “The party high command should allow me the freedom to take decisions, else I will give a befitting reply,” he said.
Mali, a former educationist and journalist appointed as Sidhu’s adviser on 11 August, also took an aggressive stance in his resignation letter, which he posted on Facebook.
“Punjab, Punjabi community cooperation, and anti-Sikh forces, that do not tolerate the emerging Punjab model, issue-based and solution-based politics of transparency and accountability, that has dawned in the backdrop of the long-drawn peaceful kisan andolan, have a nefarious design to derail the dialogue that has started taking shape and to push me to jump into the struggle with tied hands, which is not acceptable to me and rejecting the same I humbly submit that I withdraw my consent given for tendering suggestions to Navjot Singh Sidhu (sic),” he said.
Mali had courted controversy for his comments about the conditions in Jammu and Kashmir, which he described as an “open jail”. He has also been criticised for his Facebook cover photo — a caricature of late prime minister Indira Gandhi standing atop a mound of skulls, holding a weapon in her hand, that appears to have been published as the cover of a magazine in 1989.
Mali had Thursday tried to defend the cartoon, saying it dated back to 1985, the aftermath of the Operation Bluestar and the anti-Sikh riots.
His Facebook feed is replete with criticism directed at Amarinder.
In light of the J&K comments, Rawat had said if Sidhu does not remove Mali, he would have to force him to do so.
Sidhu and Amarinder have been on the warpath since the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Ever since Sidhu was appointed as state party chief, he has been projecting himself as a potential alternative to Amarinder as chief minister.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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