Sidhu meets Venugopal, Rawat in Delhi tomorrow
CHANDIGARH: Amid continued factional feud in the Punjab Congress, state unit president Navjot Singh Sidhu will meet All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretaries Harish Rawat and KC Venugopal in Delhi on Thursday.
Rawat, who is Punjab affairs in-charge, said Sidhu will meet him and AICC general secretary (organisation) Venugopal to discuss organisational matters. “Sh. Navjot Singh Sidhu, President Punjab Congress will be meeting me and Sh. Venugopal ji for discussion on certain organizational matters pertaining to Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee at Venugopal Ji’s office on 14th October at 6pm (sic.),” he tweeted on Tuesday.
The two central leaders and Sidhu will meet two days before the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting in which the forthcoming assembly elections in five states, including Punjab, are on the agenda. The Congress has been in turmoil in Punjab for the past several months and the replacement of chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh, who had faced revolt by Sidhu and several other ministers and MLAs, has failed to put an end to factionalism.
The PPCC chief is peeved with new chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi over two senior appointments and allocation of a few key portfolios and had announced his resignation from the state chief’s post on Twitter a fortnight ago with a terse resignation letter addressed to Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Though Sidhu and Channi had a meeting and agreed to a “consultation mechanism” to allow the former to have a say in important decisions, the two leaders are not the same page and their strained relations remain a worry for the party with just three months to go for the state polls. The Congress president has not taken any decision on his resignation.
A state unit leader said the appointment of district chiefs and constitution of the state body has been pending for a long time and is likely to be discussed in the meeting.
Sidhu had held a series of meetings with party leaders last month to discuss the names for the district chiefs and other posts.
“We have done most of the work and the appointments are likely to be finalised in a week or two,” he said.