Thaw in ties? Capt to meet Navjot Sidhu at lunch

Rajmeet Singh
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, November 24

After months of cold-shouldering, Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh today invited his former Cabinet colleague Navjot Singh Sidhu for a luncheon meeting tomorrow, setting the ball rolling for the cricketer-turned-politician’s likely return into the state Council of Ministers.

Sharing the information on Twitter, the CM’s media adviser, Raveen Thukral, said the meeting agenda was to discuss state and national politics. The political circles, however, were abuzz with the possibility of Sidhu returning to the Cabinet by early next month.

Sidhu was divested of the Local Bodies portfolio after the Lok Sabha polls in July last year and offered Power, which he didn’t accept and resigned from the Cabinet.

With the BJP flexing its muscles and planning to contest all seats on its own in the next Punjab Assembly elections, Sidhu’s rehabilitation would come as a shot in the arm for the Congress, which is already in a confrontational mode with the saffron party over the central farm laws.

Sources said the Congress high command’s larger concern was to ensure a miffed Sidhu, who had skipped party functions for quite some time, doesn’t leave the party.