Despite being on party’s star campaigners list and in great demand across states, cricketer-turned-TV celeb hasn’t gone anywhere at the high command’s behest.
New Delhi: Cricket star, commentator, comedy TV show host, a politician with the gift of the gab – few leaders in the Congress can boast of a resume as impressive as that of Navjot Singh Sidhu. So it’s hardly a surprise that this new entrant to the Congress is much in demand to campaign for the party in elections across the country.
But what has come as a surprise to the party that is struggling to take on the onslaught of the BJP is that Sidhu has been reluctant to accede to the demands and speak up for his new political platform, even going to the extent of defying the party high command.
A former BJP MP, Sidhu joined the Congress in January 2017, just ahead of the assembly polls in Punjab, and has regularly featured on the party’s official list of star campaigners. But Sidhu has barely ventured out of his home state at the party’s behest, despite a great demand for him from state units.
Requests galore
Sanjay Bapna, who managed the Congress’s election control room in Gujarat, said the state unit had requested for Sidhu many times on the campaign trail.
“His name was on the star campaigners’ list, and there was great demand for him from the ground. But his coordination was being handled at party headquarters in Delhi, so I have no idea why he didn’t come. Everyone else on the list came to Gujarat,” Bapna said.
The party pushed into action stalwarts like former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Even Manpreet Badal, Punjab’s finance minister, went to Gujarat to campaign. But sources say Sidhu didn’t go despite Rahul Gandhi requesting him to.
Sidhu didn’t even show up in Himachal Pradesh, which borders Punjab, and where the elections had been held a month earlier.
In the previous round of assembly polls, voting in Punjab ended on 4 February, but the results were declared only on 11 March. In the interim came the seven-phase Uttar Pradesh elections, in which Sidhu featured on the list of star campaigners.
Many Congress candidates, especially in urban areas, sent out requests for Sidhu to come and woo younger voters. But he didn’t, and neither did the high command pursue him enough, something sources attribute to the fact that he was new to the party.
A month after these polls, all three of Delhi’s municipal corporations went to the polls, and again, there was a great demand for Sidhu. The BJP, in fact, had gone all out, bringing out big guns like the party’s national president Amit Shah to campaign, and Sidhu could’ve been a great asset for the struggling Congress.
“We made several requests to him, but he didn’t turn up,” says a Congress leader who was associated with the MCD polls strategy team. “He did appear for one candidate, but that was because of his personal relations with the candidate.” This candidate was Abhishek Dutt from Andrews Ganj, who ended up winning the seat.
However, Sunil Jakhar, Punjab Congress president and Lok Sabha MP, has an explanation in Sidhu’s defence. “There were civic polls in Punjab, and being the minister for local bodies, Sidhu-ji was busy with that. Probably that is the reason he didn’t go to Gujarat,” Jakhar said.
Reached for his comment, Sidhu told ThePrint that he was only accountable to party president Rahul Gandhi. “He knows what I’m doing,” he said, adding that his new job as a cabinet minister in Punjab was keeping him occupied. Incidentally, Sidhu hasn’t tweeted from his official handle @sherryontopp since even before votes were cast in the Punjab elections.
(With inputs from Chitleen K. Sethi)