Mohali MLA Sidhu makes Cabinet cut

Pavneet Singh Chadha

Tribune News Service

Mohali, April 20

In the first Cabinet expansion of the Congress government since it came to power in the state, Mohali MLA Balbir Singh Sidhu is among nine legislators who will be sworn in as a minister on Saturday.

His name was finalised at a meeting between the Chief Minister, Capt Amarinder Singh, and Congress president Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi on Friday.

Sidhu (58), a college dropout from Punjabi University, Patiala, has been active in politics since the college time and will become the first representative from Mohali to become a minister.

Belonging to an agriculturist family in Tapa Mandi, Barnala district, three-time MLA Sidhu shifted to Mohali in 1981 and now has a gas agency in Kurali, a share in the family’s liquor vends and owns agricultural land.

Sidhu, a seasoned politician, joined the Congress in 1993, becoming the joint secretary of the Punjab Youth Congress and later holding the posts of vice-president and organising secretary. His political career at the state level assumed significance in 1997 when he contested the Assembly elections from Kharar on the Congress ticket, losing to SAD's Bibi Daljit Kaur. In 2002, after he was denied the party ticket, he chose to contest as an Independent candidate from Kharar, this time losing to Congress' Bir Devinder Singh. His first victory came in the 2007 Assembly poll on the Congress ticket when he defeated SAD candidate Jasjit Singh Bunny. After Mohali became a separate constituency, he won for a second time and then went on to register a hat-trick of victories, retaining his Mohali seat in 2017, winning against AAP's first-time candidate Narinder Singh Shergill.