Amritsar, Punjab: State minister Navjot Singh Sidhu has been out of touch lately and skipped work for straight 20 days prior to Lok Sabha elections.
Cricketer-turned-politician, Navjot Singh Sidhu has skipped work for nearly 20 days and has remained mum due to several reasons.
Sources on Thursday reported that the Punjab minister has become even more upset after his wife Navjot Kaur was denied ticket to the constituency of her choice – Chandigarh. The seat was instead gone to veteran leader Pawan Bansal as part of the party’s plan to retain the sitting lawmakers in the state.
While no formal announcement has been made about Navjot Kaur, there was a buzz that she might be allotted the coveted Amritsar seat, from where Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had beaten BJP’s Arun Jaitley in the 2014 national elections. The Congress, however, is fielding sitting lawmaker Gurjit Singh Aujla from Amritsar.
Navjot Sidhu had left Bhartiya Janata Party after the party had fielded Arun Jaitley from Amritsar. The sources said that the minister, who joined the Congress in the run-up to the assembly elections, is displeased about not being invited to speak at a rally attended by party chief Rahul Gandhi in Moga.
The minister told media sources that he is also upset because he is not on list of the party’s star campaigners list for Chhattisgarh, though he remains in demand for campaigning across the country.
Over the last months, Mr. Sidhu’s troubled relation with boss, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, has taken a turn for the worse following his statements on Pakistan and its Prime Minister Imran Khan. He was singled out by the entire nation even the board for allegedly giving more weight to his friendship with Imran Khan, than the nation.
The Chief Minister of Punjab, Amarinder Singh had not minced words when last August, Navjot Sidhu was seen hugging the Pakistan army chief during his visit to Islamabad for Imran Khan’s oath ceremony. “I’m against it… The man should understand that our soldiers are getting killed,” the Chief Minister, a former army officer, had said.
In the 2014 elections, four Lok Sabha seats in the state were won by Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party and the rest by the Akali-BJP combine.
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