New Delhi, November 23:
Delhi chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal said he is proud of the courage shown by Navjot Singh Sidhu, who has exposed the false promises made by the Charanjit Singh Channi government.
“Yesterday, chief minister Channi claimed his government has ended the sand mafia and reduced the price of the sand. Immediately, Mr Sidhu said this information is wrong. He highlighted that the sand mafia is still operating. I salute his courage,” Kejriwal said at a press conference in Punjab on Tuesday.
Sidhu himself has said that Mr Channi is lying, said the AAP chief. “He (Sidhu) is raising people-centric issues but the entire Congress party is trying to suppress his voice. First, it was Captain (Amarinder Singh), now it’s Channi,” he added.
He then took potshots at the Punjab chief minister, saying he hasn’t fulfilled his promises – like giving free electricity to the people of the state, constructing mohalla clinics etc.
Sidhu has faced attacks by former Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh, who in April this year called the cricketer-turned-politician an “opportunist” and claimed he may join the AAP ahead of the assembly elections. Singh had referred to multiple meetings Sidhu had with Kejriwal.
But after he became the state Congress chief, AAP attacked Sidhu, with the party’s Punjab affairs co-in-charge Raghav Chadha asking him to stop acting like a leader of an opposition party.
The assembly elections in Punjab are scheduled to be held next year and in the run-up to the polls, the state, especially the ruling Congress, has witnessed a lot of political churning. Amarinder Singh resigned as Punjab chief minister after a long and bitter feud with Navjot Sidhu. While Sidhu accused Amarinder Singh of being a BJP loyalist, the latter called him a “dangerous man” claiming Sidhu has close relations with Pakistan.
Amarinder Singh was replaced by Charanjit Singh Channi, who promised to end the infighting within the Congress, but Sidhu targeted his government over some of the appointments. He had even resigned as Punjab Congress chief, which led intervention from the high command after which the appointees were dropped.
Sidhu had quit the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2016. He was then a Rajya Sabha MP. He later joined the Congress and won elections in 2017 from Amritsar East.
