Capt. Amarinder: The maharaja who soldiers on
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.
Chandigarh, Sept. 18: 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 117member 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.
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. Relations between him and the chief minister were never warm.
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.
Singh fought the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Amritsar and defeated BJP’s Arun Jaitley. He then resigned in November as MP after the Supreme Court termed Punjab’s 2004 Act terminating the Satluj-Yamuna Link canal agreement as unconstitutional.