Navjot Singh Sidhu withdraws resignation as Punjab Congress chief

Rajmeet Singh
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, November 5

Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu took back his resignation on Friday. 

Sidhu had announced he was stepping down from the post of Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president on September 28. 

Sidhu addressed a press conference on Friday afternoon to announce his latest decision and said it was never personal. He said he would return to his duties as chief of Punjab Congress the day the state gets a new Director General of Police and Advocate General. 

The development comes days after Advocate General APS Deol reportedly resigned from his position and almost a month after the Punjab government sent a list of 10 names to the Union Public Service Commission for appointment to the post of Director General of Police.

APS Deol has denied sending in his resignation. 

Sidhu also questioned the state government led by Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi—a fellow Congressman—over investigations into sacrilege cases in the state and a report from a Special Task Force over drug trafficking in the state, and demanded to know what steps were taken to deal with them. 

What's the point of replacing Capt Amarinder Singh if the core issues are still unaddressed, he wanted to know, referring to his arch political rival. 

“The issues on which Congress leaders won the elections have not been addressed. In politics, there are two ways of doing things—either give false promises to win elections or think about the welfare of the state. If the government does not have the power to make the STF report public, let the party do it.”

He however praised Channi’s government for lowering power tariffs in the state.

Former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had quit his position as head of the Punjab government on September 18, 2021—days before Sidhu tendered his own resignation—accusing the Congress of humiliating him. He's since quit the Congress and even announced his own party, the Punjab Lok Congress. 

When Sidhu resigned from the party in September, he had publicly opposed two appointments made by Amarinder Singh's successor Charanjit Singh Channi's government—those of Iqbal Preet Singh Sahota, who was appointed as acting DGP of the state after Dinkar Gupta was relieved of the charge, and of APS Deol. 

Sahota was heading investigations into the first sacrilege case in the state in 2015 and Deol had been the legal representative of former Punjab DGP Sumedh Saini in the Behbal Kalan police firing in 2015, when police fired at people protesting sacrilege incidents in the state. Two protesters were killed in the police action.