Navjot Sidhu ruffles feathers with Randhawa rebuke

ibune News Service

Gurdaspur, October 11

Congress MLA Navjot Singh Sidhu’s rebuke of Cabinet minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa in the presence of AICC general secretary Harish Rawat, Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh and Rahul Gandhi during a meeting has boomeranged.

Randhawa, MLA from Dera Baba Nanak, is among the two tallest leaders of the area, the other being his Cabinet colleague Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa. The net effect is Randhawa’s supporters have now decided to boycott Sidhu.

Congressmen point out that Sidhu’s act of censuring his colleague was akin to ‘shooting the messenger’. “Randhawa was just handing him Rawat’s message to cut short his extempore because he had taken up more time than what was allotted to him. Instead of being an obedient soldier of the party, Sidhu started venting his ire on Randhawa. Instead of abiding, he inadvertently shot the messenger. This was an unsavoury incident, which should have been avoided more so because the proceedings were telecast live,” said Bajwa. Former Batala MLA Ashwani Sekhri, too, castigated Sidhu. “We are public figures. We should conduct ourselves with dignity when we are among the public.”

Randhawa chose to play down the incident. “In political functions, in the heat of the moment, such things happen. Let us just move on,” he said.