Captain likely to take up Sidhu's defiance with Rahul Gandhi

Punjab Chief Minister Capt. Amarinder Singh is slated to visit the national capital and meet up with Congress president Rahul Gandhi and other senior party leaders. The chief minister, who calls on the party leadership from time to time, officially has no specific agenda.

Sources, however, indicated that the matter pertaining to defiant legislator Navjot Singh Sidhu, who has not assumed office post the reshuffling of portfolios in Punjab, is one issue he will take up with Rahul.

Sidhu, who has remained incommunicado, last tweeted a photo of himself with Rahul Gandhi  and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and said he had presented his version of the story. With this, he has sent out a message of his proximity to the first family of the Congress, and also a message of hope that his view will count with them, and also hinted that he may get his way with the chief minister.

Sidhu, who had initially kept out of campaigning in Punjab during the Lok Sabha polls, returned, ostensibly at the behest of Priyanka Gandhi. 

The chief minister reshuffled the portfolios of most of his cabinet colleagues on June 6. Sidhu, who was the minister for local bodies, panchayats, tourism and culture was divested of these and allocated the charge of energy. The state government has proposed tariff hikes for power, and the energy minister will have to deal with the response. 

The energy portfolio itself is not insignificant. Union Food Processing Industries Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal's brother and then Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh's brother-in-law Bikram Singh Majithia held the power portfolio all through the Akali regime. But Sidhu feels miffed over the circumstances in which he was shown out of the local bodies ministry—after the chief minister blamed him for the electoral losses in the urban areas leading to the BJP winning all the three Parliamentary constituencies they contested. 

Another minister whose portfolio was changed to his anger and hurt is O.P. Soni, who was the education minister. He was allocated medical education and research, and felt undermined enough to stay away from Chandigarh, and not assume office. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh called him up about 10 days after the rejig. But Soni brushed aside his anger, and said he could not join because he was busy with byelections in a municipal corporation!

Punjab is possibly the only state where the Congress performance was good and it has a stable government not dependent on external support. What Singh will tell Rahul about Sidhu is not clear. But it is unlikely that the Congress high command will choose Sidhu over Singh, given they will not want to rock the party boat in the Land of Five Rivers.