Amritsar Central MLA OP Soni was a surprise pick as deputy CM

GS Paul

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, September 20

Amritsar Central MLA OP Soni was a surprise pick for the Congress as Deputy Chief Minister. Soni was nowhere in the picture till the eleventh hour when his name emerged for the post.

A close confidante of former CM Capt Amarinder Singh, Soni, despite being a five-time MLA, had to wait for a year before becoming part of the Amarinder cabinet as the education minister in April 2018.

Soon, during the cabinet reshuffle he was divested of his portfolio, to which he had revolted ‘silently’. After two weeks, he accepted the charge of medical education and research in June 2019, but not before speaking out on record that he was punished instead of being rewarded as the school education standards had shown improvement and the Congress had performed well in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from his constituency.

Later, he consoled himself saying it was ‘the CM’s prerogative’.

Soni seldom shared cordial ties with the then BJP parliamentary polls nominee Navjot Singh Sidhu against whom he lost his life’s only election in 2009.

Soni challenged the result and filed two cases - a defamation case in the court of the Civil Judge (Senior Division) in Amritsar against Sidhu for his alleged remarks that Soni was embroiled in drug peddling and another case filed in the Punjab and Haryana High Court on June 29, 2009, where Soni challenged the Lok Sabha election result. Sidhu had defeated Soni by 6,858 votes then. As the trial in the High Court was under way, Sidhu challenged it in the Supreme Court.

However, with the change of political equations when Sidhu joined the Congress in 2017, the Congress leadership asked Soni to reach a compromise with Sidhu and he withdrew both the cases as Sidhu had to contest the Amritsar East seat on a Congress ticket.

Yet, the sweet-sour relation between them continued and both maintained distance from each other. During the course of friction between Amarinder and Sidhu, Soni sided with the former.

Soni was also conspicuous by his absence when Sidhu, after getting appointed as PPCC chief, visited Amritsar and, along with his supporting MLAs, paid obeisance at the Golden Temple.

Nonetheless, Amritsar’s first mayor Soni (1991-1996) remained popular among the residents of the holy city and was still fondly referred to as ‘Mayor Saheb’. He was elected to the Punjab Vidhan Sabha four times independently in 1997, 2002, 2007 and 2012, before contesting successfully again in 2017 on a Congress ticket. His USP is his ‘easy accessibility’.