The ongoing spat between Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh and his “outspoken” cabinet colleague Navjot Singh Sidhu is likely to be taken up by the former with the party’s national president Rahul Gandhi in their meeting this week in New Delhi.
Both Capt Amarinder and Sidhu have been camping at the national capital to have audience with Rahul Gandhi to put forth their respective cases.
The Chief Minister, who is currently in the national capital for the Congress Working Committee’s introspection meet following its Lok Sabha debacle, is returning Chandigarh on late Monday and will go back to meet Rahul later in the week.
“The Chief Minister is meeting Rahul Gandhi later in the week,” a senior functionary in the Chief Minister's Office told IANS.
Capt Amarinder is said to have prepared a complete case against Sidhu with the list of constituencies where Congress had always fared well, but failed this time, holding Sidhu responsible for not doing his job well as the Urban Development Minister.
On the other hand, Sidhu is also all-prepared with his list of “urban” segments where the party has performed well for which he should be given all credits.
The cold war between the Chief Minister and his Local Bodies Minister intensified when Capt Amarinder categorically blamed Sidhu for the party's poor performance in the state's urban areas saying that his actions during the parliamentary elections had not only harmed him but also Rahul Gandhi.
The Chief Minister had stated that the urban vote bank had been the backbone of the Congress in the State but Sidhu’s failure to do any development work had hurt the party, which had performed well in the rural areas in these elections.
Capt Amarinder went in to add that he had raised the issue of changing Sidhu’s portfolio some months ago, but the party decided to take a call on it after the Lok Sabha elections. “I am confident that both Rahul Gandhi and party leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra would agree to the decision in the interest of the state and the party,” said Capt Amarinder after the declaration of results.
He had also expressed his unhappiness over Sidhu’s “friendly match” jibe by saying that he should have waited for a day to give such a statement in case he had any difference of opinion.
While addressing an election rally in Bathinda on May 17, Sidhu talked about a “friendly match” without naming anyone, while asking the electorate to “punish” the “players” who have 75:25 share.
Before that, Sidhu’s wife and former MLA Dr Navjot Kaur Sidhu had blamed Capt Amarinder and state party affairs’ in-charge Asha Kumari for playing a negative role in declining her nomination from Chandigarh Lok Sabha seat — a statement backed by Sidhu.
Sidhu had also declared to step down if the Badals were not punished in the 2015 sacrilege cases.
Referring to Sidhu's remarks on the investigation into the sacrilege cases in Bathinda, the seat that the Congress lost to Akali Dal’s Harsimrat Kaur Badal by a slender margin of 21,772 votes, the Chief Minister had said that the Minister evidently did not understand that the SIT had been set up by the Assembly.
The Chief Minister had also reiterated that Sidhu's ‘yaari and jhappi' (friendship and hug) with the Pakistani Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, would not be tolerated, especially by Indian army personnel, who were being killed by ISI-backed terrorists while he was going hugging their leaders.
Meanwhile, cricketer-turned-politician Sidhu indirectly took a jibe at the Chief Minister by quoting a couplet from a famous ghazal of Iqbal. “I am not a lone warrior in this universe. I have a plenty of friends now,” Sidhu tweeted on Saturday.
