Former Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Sunday announced that he would contest the 2022 state assembly elections from Patiala, which is his family bastion. Sources told CNN-News18 that Singh said he won’t run away. Earlier in the day, Singh had told a TV channel in an interview that he won’t leave Patiala.
Singh represented the constituency four times, while his wife Preneet Kaur won from the seat in 2014. Singh had resigned as the Punjab chief minister in September following an acrimonious power tussle with MLA Navjot Singh Sidhu, who was appointed as the state Congress president. Charanjit Singh Channi was elected as his replacement. Singh, who was one of the Congress’ powerful regional satraps, also said he had never experienced “this sort of interference ever as a chief minister” from the Congress.
The former CM had floated his own political party, Punjab Lok Congress, earlier this month and vowed to contest all 117 assembly seats in the state. He had earlier even said he is open to forming an alliance with the BJP for the 2022 elections.
Singh had in April this year challenged Sidhu to contest against him from Patiala and said that the latter would be defeated just like BJP’s General (retd) JJ Singh, who contested the 2017 election against Singh but had to forfeit his security deposit after the result, with just 11.1 per cent of the votes.
Bitter feud with Congress
Earlier this month, Singh had resigned from the Congress and in his scathing seven-page resignation letter to party president Sonia Gandhi, he mentioned how he felt “deeply hurt” with the way he was treated by the party. He also mentioned his years-long association and contributions to the Congress, his agony towards Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra for patronising Sidhu. He even called Punjab Congress in-charge Harish Rawat the “most dubious individual”.
The 79-year-old had earlier said that Sidhu was the reason behind Congress’s rapid decline in Punjab. Speaking to CNN-News18 in October, Singh had said Congress lost ground very fast in Punjab after Sidhu was made the state president. “About six months ago, they were doing well. One main reason for the decline was (when) Sidhu was made the state party president,” he had said, adding that Sidhu’s elevation “created some bad blood”.
On his long association with the Gandhis, Singh had said he is clueless as to “why the family did what they did”.
Speaking on the Punjab assembly elections, Singh had then said that talks on seat-sharing with the BJP could happen only if the party resolves the farmers’ issue. And now that the farm laws have been repealed, it has opened up possibilities of a pre-poll alliance. News18 on Sunday reported that how the Punjab BJP now prefers a tie-up with Singh for the forthcoming state assembly polls, instead of forging an alliance with former ally, the Shiromani Akali Dal.
Punjab BJP chief Ashwani Sharma told News18: “Captain saab has an appeal in the urban areas and he has expressed his willingness to work on an alliance with the BJP.”
Vehemently denying any possibility of going back to an alliance with the SAD, Sharma said: “An alliance is an equal partnership, but the SAD was contesting on 84 per cent of the seats last time and the BJP chose to remain the second fiddle in the alliance because it was thought out in the benefit of Punjab. But we don’t see any possibility of going back to that alliance.”
(With inputs from Pallavi Ghosh)
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