Big Snub For Navjot Singh Sidhu As Congress Denies Ticket To His Wife For Lok Sabha Polls

The continuing factional feud within the Congress party’s Punjab unit between chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh and cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu once again came to the fore, on Wednesday, after the party declared candidates for the Chandigarh and Amritsar Lok Sabha seats.

Sidhu’s wife, Navjot Kaur, who had officially requested the party leadership for a ticket from Chandigarh and was also seen as a frontrunner from the Amritsar constituency, has been denied a nomination from either seat. The party has nominated former Union minister Pawan Kumar Bansal from the Chandigarh constituency while incumbent MP Gurjit Singh Aujla has been fielded again from the Amritsar seat.

Bansal is a former four-term MP from Chandigarh and had lost the 2014 Lok Sabha polls from the seat to BJP’s Kirron Kher. Aujla, a confidante of the Punjab chief minister, had won the Amritsar constituency in a bypoll necessitated in March 2017 after Singh vacated the seat he had won in 2014 by defeating BJP’s Arun Jaitley.

Sidhu, it may be noted, had been the MP from Amritsar for three consecutive terms prior to 2014 when he was a member of the BJP. However, after joining the Congress party, Sidhu had successfully contested the 2017 assembly polls from the Amritsar East constituency and joined Singh’s cabinet as tourism and culture minister.

However, tensions between Singh and Sidhu began around August 2018 when his much-publicised hug to Pakistan’s Army Chief Qamar Bajwa at the swearing-in ceremony of newly elected Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan embarrassed the Congress party in India. Singh had publicly criticized his cabinet colleague’s gesture saying Sidhu should have exercised restrain especially in wake of the continuing terror attacks on India that had the tacit support of Pakistan and its military establishment.

The flashpoint between the two Sardars seems to have come months later after Sidhu walked away with kudos over the Kartarpur Corridor affair. Pakistan’s move to accept opening up of the Kartarpur Corridor, a significant gesture for Punjab’s dominant Sikh population, had been touted by close aide’s of the former cricketer as a direct result of his backchannel talks with Imran Khan. Sidhu had later accepted an invitation from Khan to attend the groundbreaking ceremony of the Kartarpur corridor while the Punjab chief minister had turned down a similar invite citing Pakistan’s continued support to its homegrown terror groups who target India. In wake of the Pulwama terror attack earlier this year, Sidhu had again left his party red-faced when he called for peace between the two countries while Singh, a former Armyman himself, had batted for deterrent military action by India against Pakistan.

Sources close to Singh, the former Maharaja of Patiala and a veteran of Punjab’s power politics, told Outlook that he was instrumental in having Sidhu’s name struck off the list of Congress party’s start campaigners in various states for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. A close aide of the Punjab chief minister said that Singh had conveyed to Congress president Rahul Gandhi that Sidhu would be a liability for the party in the post-Pulwama scenario owing to his close proximity to the Pakistan Premier.

Last month, in another personal setback for Sidhu, the party had dropped him from its list of speakers at Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s rally in Punjab’s Moga. A visibly miffed Sidhu had gone public with his disappointed, telling reporters: “If I am not good enough to speak at Rahul’s rally, I am not good enough as a speaker and a campaigner. Whether I am invited to speak or not is something that is not under my control. But it has shown me my place and made it clear who all from the Congress will campaign for the party in the coming Lok Sabha polls.”

Sources say the voluble minister has also stopped attending party meetings and official work since the Moga slight. The denial of ticket to his wife, many believe, is the strongest message from Singh yet about Sidhu’s dispensability within the party. A senior party leader from the state, however, said that the Punjab chief minister must “stop insulting Sidhu and show some generosity and statesmanship” otherwise the Amritsar legislator may be forced to quit the Congress and try his luck at returning to the BJP. Other party leaders wonder if Sidhu’s exit is something that Singh actually is trying to orchestrate and whether it is now too late to pacify the former cricketer.