Captain fishes in AAP’s troubled waters, invites Chhotepur aboard

CHANDIGARH: Punjab Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh on Thursday came to the defence of “old friend” Sucha Singh Chhotepur, state convenor of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), who is facing the heat of a “sting operation, engineered from within the party”.

As a defiant Chhotepur refused to step down despite threats of being stripped of the post, Amarinder told HT that he was ready to welcome him to Congress fold. Amarinder was reacting to reports that AAP may remove Chhotepur. “I know him for the past 35 years. I may have strong political differences with Chhotepur, but I acknowledge and admire his qualities of honesty and integrity and will not like to keep quiet when he is being made a victim of an internal coup and intrigue. It is disgustingly unfair that when you don’t like a man, you start tarnishing and targeting his unblemished image,” Amarinder said in a statement.

Hitting out at AAP national

convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, party’s state in-charge Sanjay Singh, senior leaders Durgesh Pathak and Ashish Khetan, Amarinder said leaders from Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Haryana were resorting to “dirty tricks” against the son of the soil Chhotepur, who had nourished and nurtured the party from its inception in Punjab. “The sting operation has clearly been conceived, planned and executed as part of an internal coup engineered by the AAP leaders from outside who want to control Punjab through remote by using their local stooges and inconsequential wannabe leaders,” the state Congress chief said.