Will he or won't he? That was the question Congressmen and Aam Aadmi Party members asked alike loudly, in the context of Navjot Singh Sidhu joining them, ever since April 22, 2016. That was the day he quit the BJP and the Rajya Sabha seat to which Prime Minister Narendra Modi had nominated him just a few days earlier. On the cold morning of January 16, 2017, Sidhu made up his mind and brought that suspense to an end.
He met Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, firmed up his resolve to join the Congress, came out garlanded and flushed with happiness, to tell the world he was a born Congressman, and it was his “ghar wapsi”—back home. His father Bhagwant Singh Sidhu had been an office bearer of the Patiala district congress committee at some point in time.
The former cricketer and celebrity comedian did not join any party for months choosing instead, to form his own political front, Aawaaz-e-Punjab. But, apparently, being part of a mainsteam party was always in his mind, and he has spent the last few months making up his mind on which was the best suited.
Sidhu broke up with the BJP under pressure from the Shiromani Akali Dal which, sources say, found some of his light-one-liners targeting Harsimrat Kaur Badal, union minister for food processing industries and wife of Sukhbir Badal, in poor taste. On his part, Sidhu had maintained that the Punjab government where the senior partner was the SAD, was neglecting his constituency of Amritsar in development work.
But once he quit, he even made no bones about wanting to “do something for Punjab”. Political parties read this as him wanting to be the chief minister of Punjab, and therefore wanting to be projected as the chief ministerial face. Neither AAP nor Congress was willing to do that—in fact, his role for them was as a star campaigner. They did not see chief minister material in him.
Sidhu had long been unhappy in the BJP even though he represented the party's Amritsar Lok Sabha constituency for ten years beginning 2004. It was sometime in the summer of 2013, that former chief minister of Punjab and Congress leader, Rajinder Kaur Bhattal picked up the phone and asked Navjot Sidhu to join the Congress. Sources who are privy to Bhattal's phone call say she concluded with, “Why should you be where you are unhappy?”.
A day before Sidhu “returned home” to the Congress, Punjab's deputy chief minister Sukhbir Badal had remarked that Sidhu was probably waiting for the highest bid, the way he would for the highest paying channel!
In the Congress, Sidhu will be extremely useful as a Badal basher and a loud anti-Akali voice. The party may give him a ticket, but he would be wrong to think he will be made chief minister or deputy chief minister in the government of a party that has many stalwarts. But Sidhu can definitely count on them organising huge rallies for him over the next few days, for a crowd puller he is.