Navjot Singh Sidhu, who sent his resignation from the Punjab cabinet to Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Monday morning, was inducted into the Congress ahead of the assembly elections in February 2017, largely for his ability to speak in a way that holds the masses enthralled. And he was rewarded—being made a minister in the state government.
But the last one year or so has seen him ask for more—in his own style. So much so that Amarinder Singh recently remarked, “He probably wants to be the chief minister”. Sidhu has defied the chief minister many times and stayed away from cabinet meetings. In the course of an analysis into the reason why they lost five seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the chief minister pointed to Sidhu's performance as local government minister and later shifted him to the ministry of power and renewable energy. A miffed Sidhu came to Delhi and met Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra and tweeted about it along with a photograph. The impression that gained ground in Punjab was that the Congress leadership had bought his story, and in a sense, supported his defiance. Now it appears that was not the case. Neither the party high command nor the chief minister, nor Sidhu himself has so far elaborated on what makes for a credible insider story.
Sidhu, believed to be taking a break before party hunting again, and also keeping mum, may be happy with the way others are speaking for him—on why he has been allowed to go so easily.
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Sukhpal Singh Khaira (a one-time Congressman, then an AAP member and now the founder of his own Punjabi Ekta Party), who lost from the Bhatinda parliamentary constituency, thinks Sidhu had paid the price for speaking about the “secret pact” between the Badals and Amarinder Singh. Union Food Processing Industries minister and SAD leader Harsimrat Badal won Bhatinda.
Harpal Singh Cheema, AAP MLA and leader of the opposition in Punjab, seems to think the same way, and maintained that Sidhu's outbursts against the Badals had not suited to Amarinder Singh. He also suggested that Sidhu quit the party after quitting the cabinet.
The argument and allegations that the rift between Sidhu and the chief minister is because of a supposed “friendly match between Captain and the Badals” goes back to election time in 2017—in fact it had been heard even before that.
Now, the friendly matches!
The Punjab vigilance bureau in 2003, when Amarinder Singh was the chief minister, accused the Badals of amassing assets of over Rs 3,000 crore, and then scaled it down to Rs 78 crore. Later, when Badal was the chief minister, Amarinder Singh knocked at the Supreme Court door to transfer the disproportionate assets case to outside Punjab, as the chief minister could influence the investigations.. It did not happen.
The Badals were acquitted in 2011. Sukhbir Singh Badal, then deputy chief minister, said the case was nothing but political vendetta by Captain.
After the verdict, Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal told the Vidhan Sabha that he was withdrawing the cases he had filed against Amarinder Singh. “Let's not sling mud anymore, and I fold my hands and apologise to Capt Amarinder Singh for the pain I might have caused him. Let's put an end to the tradition of vendetta politics,” the then nearly 90-year-old father figure in Punjab's politics told the house.
The existence of a “secret pact” between the two was heard during the 2017 assembly elections, when Amarinder Singh, then president of the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee, contested from then chief minister Parkash Singh Badal's Lambi seat—in addition to his traditional Patiala—on grounds that Badal must be defeated, and that the Congress did not have a bigger candidate to take him on his pocket borough.
Badal polled 66,375 votes and Captain 43605. The AAP fielded Jarnail Singh—who had flung a shoe at then Union home minister P. Chidambaram in 2014—and he polled 21,254 votes. There were three other candidates, besides 1,101 NOTA votes. It was a serious contest, and not a friendly match at Lambi that winter week.
In Patiala, Amarinder Singh won by a margin of 52,407 votes over the AAP candidate. More importantly, he defeated the Badals' handpicked SAD candidate, former Army chief Gen J.J. Singh, who polled 11,677 votes and lost his deposit!
The question now is, did Sidhu say what he did in Bhatinda, to make up to the Badals?
He had alienated them so much so that even when he was in the BJP, he could not get any benefit of the party's oldest ally, the SAD, in any manner that would please him, for his constituency, Amritsar. The Akalis would also send loads of BJP people from Amritsar to complain to the BJP national leadership that Sidhu was not performing. That was what snowballed into his exit from the party, and remaining partyless for a while, party hunting thereafter, and eventually joining the Congress: only because they needed anyone who could win against a surging BJP, and he was popular, albeit for non-political, non-leadership reasons.
The political options before him may not be too many.
The BJP does not need him now. There are no elections in the offing for which Sidhu could be of any use. Add to that, he has spoken so much against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has not demonstrated so far the political trait of forget and forgive. And the SAD, which unquestioningly supported Modi right from when he was to be projected as the PM candidate of the BJP, does not want a Sikh face in the BJP.
The SAD has done more to unmake Sidhu than any other person or party, ruling out any chance of his entry into the traditional Panthic party.
As long as Amarinder Singh is the chief minister, Sidhu has to stay quietly as a Congressman outside the government. Or quit. The only party with doors open for him may be the Aam Aadmi Party, which will contest elections in National Capital Territory of Delhi in a few months.
“AAP is the correct party for Navjot Singh Sidhu because he will be able to breathe openly and express whatever he wants. We welcome him. Arvind ji is also ready,” Harpal Singh Cheema told a television channel.
