News Analysis India

Tag: Amarinder Singh resignation

  • Sonia Gandhi accepts Amarinder Singh’s resignation from Congress

    By PTI

    NEW DELHI: Congress president Sonia Gandhi has accepted former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh’s resignation from primary membership of the party, AICC general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal said on Wednesday, November 3, 2021.

    Singh on Tuesday had resigned from the Congress, accusing party president Sonia Gandhi and Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra of hatching a “midnight conspiracy” to oust him.

    The 79-year-old leader had timed his resignation letter with an announcement on the name of his new party.

    The Punjab Lok Congress will be formally launched after the Election Commission registers it and allots a poll symbol.

    “Hon’ble Congress President has accepted the resignation of Captain Amarinder Singh from the primary membership of Indian National Congress,” Venugopal said on Twitter.

    Singh, in his seven-page letter to Sonia Gandhi, made public on Twitter, had lashed out at Navjot Singh Sidhu, the new Punjab Congress president whom he described as an “acolyte of the Pakistani deep state”, and “dubious individual” Harish Rawat, the former All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge for the state. 

  • Will Congress take cognizance of Amarinder Singh’s ‘extremely serious’ charge against Sidhu and act: BJP

    By PTI

    NEW DELHI: Seizing on outgoing Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh’s charge of anti-national against state Congress president Navjot Singh Sidhu, the BJP on Sunday said Singh has voiced an issue which the country had been grappling with and asked the opposition party if it will take cognizance of the allegations and take action.

    Senior BJP leader Prakash Javadekar termed Singh’s charges “extremely serious” and asked why Congress president Sonia Gandhi and its two other main leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra have kept silence.

    “Such an extremely serious allegation has been levelled by the chief minister against the party president, and the Congress is silent. What does it mean? We demand that the Congress should speak up and make its stand clear,” he told reporters.

    “We want to ask if the Congress will take cognizance of such extremely serious allegations and take action,” Javadekar added.

    Hours after quitting as Punjab CM, Singh had on Saturday launched a no-holds-barred attack against Sidhu, calling him “anti-national”, “dangerous” and a “total disaster”.

    He had mentioned Sidhu’s praise for Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan and him hugging its army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa during a trip to the neighbouring country to slam his bete noire.

    Javadekar said the country had seen this and had been grappling with this issue.

     

  • Amarinder Singh’s resignation is Congress’ admission of failure to perform in Punjab: Badal

    A mere change of guard, however, will not save the Congress #39; sinking ship in Punjab, he said.

  • Amarinder Singh’s resignation a panic reaction of Congress high command to salvage situation: BJP

    The BJP expressed confidence that the people of Punjab, having lost trust in the Shironami Akali Dal (SAD) as well, will choose the party in the elections early next year.

  • Amarinder Singh resignation: Congress MLAs authorise Sonia Gandhi to pick new CLP leader

    By PTI

    CHANDIGARH: Punjab Governor Banwarilal Purohit Saturday accepted Chief Minister Amarinder Singh’s resignation.

    The governor, however, has asked him and his council of ministers to continue in office for the transaction of routine business till alternative arrangements are made, according to an official statement.

    “Punjab Governor Banwarilal Purohit accepted his (Amarinder) resignation and that of his council of ministers,” said the statement.

    Earlier in the day, Singh submitted his resignation along with that of his council of ministers.

    “I, hereby, tender my resignation as Chief Minister, and that of my Council of Ministers,” the one-line resignation letter said.

    Meanwhile, Punjab Congress MLAs have authorised party president Sonia Gandhi to pick a new CLP leader.

    A resolution to this effect was passed unanimously in a meeting of the Congress Legislature Party here.

    Senior Congress leader Ajay Maken, who was one of the two central observers deputed by the party, told reporters that 78 of 80 party MLAs were present in the meeting.

    He said another resolution praising and thanking Amarinder Singh for his contribution towards Punjab and the Congress was also unanimously passed at the meeting.

    “We expect that the party will continue to get guidance of Amarinder Singh,” he said.

  • Amarinder Singh: The man who put Congress back on saddle in Punjab.

    By PTI

    CHANDIGARH: One of the strongest regional satraps of the Congress, Amarinder Singh was the leader who put the party back in the saddle in Punjab after an intensely fought poll battle that decimated the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and crushed the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) dream of expanding its footprint beyond Delhi.

    The 79-year-old widely respected and popular leader steered the Congress in 2017 to a landslide victory in the 117-member assembly to occupy the chief minister’s post for the second time.

    The ‘maharaja’s’ win in Punjab after 10 years had also rekindled the hopes for the revival of the grand old party.

    But now all seems not well in the party’s state unit as over 50 MLAs have written to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi seeking that Singh be replaced as chief minister, a development that comes just about four months ahead of assembly elections in the state.

    Singh has now decided to quit from the post of chief minister.

    Belonging to a very rare breed of politicians who have seen action in the Indo-Pak war, Singh tasted success in the 2017 polls after Akali Dal supremo Parkash Singh Badal foiled his previous attempts to become chief minister in 2007 and 2012.

    Navjot Singh Sidhu joined the Congress a few months ahead of the polls after quitting the BJP.

    Speculation was rife that he would be given the post of deputy chief minister, but he was made a Cabinet Minister.

    Relations between him and the chief minister were never warm.

    Just two years after the Congress came to power, Sidhu was stripped off key portfolios in the cabinet reshuffle in June 2019 and he then resigned from the state cabinet.

    Singh had divested Sidhu of the local government and tourism and cultural affairs departments and allotted him the power and new and renewable energy portfolio though the latter never assumed charge of his new department.

    Shortly afterwards, Sidhu had approached the then Congress president Rahul Gandhi and “apprised him of the situation”.

    The tension between Singh and Sidhu came out in the open.

    While Singh blamed him for the “inept handling” of the local government department, claiming that it resulted in “poor performance” of the Congress in urban areas in the (2019) Lok Sabha polls, the former cricketer, on the other hand said “(Congress chief) Rahul Gandhi is my captain.Rahul Gandhi is the captain of the captain (Singh) also.”

    However, things became worse and finally, Sidhu was appointed state Congress president, notwithstanding strong opposition from Singh .

    Once a leader of the Akali Dal, Singh, the ‘scion of Patiala’, in his short Army career, fought in the 1965 war.

    Son of late Maharaja Yadavindra Singh of Patiala, Singh did his initial schooling at Lawrence School, Sanawar and Doon School in Dehradun, before joining the National Defence Academy, Kharagwasla in 1959 and graduating from there in 1963.

    Commissioned in the Indian Army in 1963, he was posted in 2nd Bn.

    Sikh Regiment (both his father and grandfather had served the battalion), served in Field Area – Indo Tibetan border for two years and was appointed Aide-de-Camp to Lt Gen Harbaksh Singh, GOC-in-C Western Command.

    The political career of Singh, who was considered a close friend of late Rajiv Gandhi, began in January 1980 when he was elected an MP.

    But he resigned from the Congress and the Lok Sabha in protest against the entry of the army into the Golden Temple during Operation Blue Star in 1984.

    After joining the Akali Dal in August 1985, Singh got elected to the Punjab assembly on an Akali Dal (Longowal) ticket in the 1995 elections.

    During his first term as chief minister (2002-07), his government in 2004 passed the state law terminating Punjab’s water sharing pact with neighbouring states.

    Last year, his government brought four bills, which were later passed by the state assembly, to “counter the contentious farm legislation enacted by Parliament”.

    In his second term, his government also announced a waiver of crores of rupees worth of loans under the farm debt waiver scheme for labourers and the landless farming community.

    Singh fought the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Amritsar and defeated BJP’s Arun Jaitley by a margin of more than one lakh votes.

    He then resigned in November as MP after the Supreme Court termed Punjab’s 2004 Act terminating the Satluj-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal agreement as unconstitutional.

    A few days later, he was appointed president of the Punjab Congress again in the run-up to the polls.

    A widely travelled person, Singh has penned several books including his memoirs of the 1965 Indo-Pak war.