Former Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh ended his association with the Congress on Tuesday and sent his resignation letter to the party president Sonia Gandhi listing the reasons for his exit. The move comes just months ahead of the Punjab assembly elections.
Singh also announced his new political party Punjab Lok Congress. He said that the party’s registration is pending approval with the Election Commission of India and that its symbol will be approved later.
In his resignation letter to Gandhi, Singh listed the initiatives undertaken under his leadership in Punjab and red-flagged the appointment of “acolyte of the Pakistani deep state” Navjot Singh Sidhu as the Punjab Congress Committee chief.
“Despite my profound reservations and over the unanimous advice of almost all the MPs from Punjab, you chose to appoint an acolyte of the Pakistani deep state Navjot Sidhu who had publicly hugged the Pakistan Army Chief Gen Bajwa and Prime Minister Imran Khan, as the President of the Punjab Congress Committee,” the former CM wrote in his letter.
He said that he had told Gandhi earlier as well that Sidhu is a person of an unstable mind and that she will one day regret this decision and it would be too late by then. “I am sure you must be regretting it now. When you chose to appoint a person who had been with the BJP for 14 years as PPCC President, I thought to myself where has the Congress come to,” he added in his seven-page resignation letter.
Singh had quit as the Punjab Chief Minister in September amid a bitter power tussle with Sidhu. A few days ago, Singh had dismissed reports of back-channel talks with the Congress as incorrect, saying the time for rapprochement was over and his decision to leave the grand old party was final.
(Edited by : Kanishka Sarkar)
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