Sidhu damaging Congress with ill-timed comments: Punjab CM
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh yesterday accused his minister Navjot Singh Sidhu of damaging the state’s ruling Congress with his ill-timed comments against him and the party leadership.
If he was a real Congressman, Sidhu should have chosen a better time to air his grievances instead of just ahead of voting in Punjab, the chief minister said in an informal interaction with reporters here before leaving for Patiala to cast his vote along with his family.
His wife and former federal minister Preneet Kaur is contesting from the Patiala Lok Sabha seat on a Congress ticket, and Singh expressed confidence that the party would sweep not just this seat but all the 13 constituencies in Punjab.
On the recent controversial and rebellious remarks of Sidhu, who had accused the chief minister
of being responsible for the denial of ticket to his wife Navjot Kaur from Chandigarh, Singh said the cricketer-turned politician was harming the party with such irresponsible actions.
It was not Sidhu’s election but that of the entire Congress, said the chief minister.
It was for the high command to decide on any action against Sidhu, but the Congress, as a party, does not tolerate indiscipline, Singh said.
The chief minister said he personally did not have any differences with Sidhu, whom he had known since he was a child. Perhaps he is ambitious and wants to be the chief minister, Singh said in response to a question.
Such irritants notwithstanding, the chief minister exuded confidence of a Congress victory in all the 13 seats, saying he was getting very positive reports from all the constituencies, with Congressmen having already started celebrating, indicating their level of confidence.
Harsimrat’s daughter among Punjab’s first-time voters (17:12) Bathinda, May 19 (IANS) Federal Minister and Akali Dal leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal’s daughter Gurlin Kaur was among around 400,000 first-time voters in Punjab yesterday. She was seen with a certificate of appreciation outside a polling station in her ancestral village Badal, near Bathinda.
Former Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal’s daughterin-law Harsimrat Kaur is locked in a multi-cornered contest in Bathinda, the Akali Dal stronghold.
A two-term MP from the seat, Kaur is taking on the Punjab Democratic Alliance’s Sukhpal Singh Khaira, Aam Aadmi Party’s Baljinder Kaur and Congress candidate Amrinder Singh Warring.
In 2014, Harsimrat Kaur scraped through by 19,500 votes against her estranged cousin Manpreet Badal, now a cabinet minister in the state Congress government. Punjab’s 13 Lok Sabha seats went to polls in the seventh and final phase of the general elections yesterday.