Senior Punjab leader and former finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal on Wednesday joined the BJP after writing a letter to Rahul Gandhi declaring his official resignation from the grand old party over "factionalism".
Manpreet Badal wrote that a coterie of men in Delhi is running affairs in Punjab and have only increased factionalism.
In his letter to Gandhi, he wrote, "...far from being acknowledged and appreciated for my efforts, I was vilified in the Punjab Congress for failing to display what can only be described as fiscal recklessness."
He further wrote, "Suffice it to say, that the manner in which the Congress party has conducted its affairs and taken decisions, specifically with regards to Punjab, has been disheartening, to say the least. The coterie of men entrusted with the authority to dictate Delhi's writ to the Punjab unit of the Congress are far from sound. Instead of striving to reduce internal disagreement in an already divided house, these men acted to further increase factionalism, and almost as a matter of policy strengthened the very worst elements within the party," the former Congress leader wrote in the letter."
Advertisement
After being expelled from the Akali Dal in 2010, he formed his own party People's Party of Punjab in 2011 and later merged it with the Congress in 2016.
The five-time MLA and nephew of former Punjab CM Prakash Singh Badal, Manpreet Singh Badal has been the state finance minister twice. In the 2022 elections he lost the seat to AAP by 63,581 votes which is the highest margin lost by any candidate in the entire Punjab elections of 2022.
