Congress mulls sending Navjot Sidhu to battleground Karnataka

Rajmeet Singh

Chandigarh, April 2

Even as the Punjab Congress is treading cautiously as far as former PPCC chief Navjot Singh Sidhu’s political role is concerned, the party high command is planning to engage its firebrand leader against the BJP in the Karnataka Assembly elections.

Soon after his release from the Patiala jail on Saturday, the cricketer-turned-politician targeted the BJP and AAP for allegedly playing a friendly match in defaming Punjabis and hatching a conspiracy to impose the President’s rule in the state.

Will be part of key party committee

I am looking forward to meeting Sidhu as soon as he returns to public life. He will be part of the political affairs committee. —Raja Warring, PPCC chief

Sidhu is expected to meet Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi in Delhi in a few days. An emissary of the party leadership is learnt to have convinced Sidhu in seeing a common factor behind the disqualification of Rahul as MP and his spending 10 months in jail. The role of Sidhu is expected to be discussed tomorrow as senior party leaders from Punjab are accompanying Rahul to a Surat court where the latter will file an appeal against his conviction.

In January this year, the party had sent an invitation for Bharat Jodo Yatra’s Punjab leg to his wife Dr Navjot Kaur Sidhu, who had joined Rahul in the absence of her husband. In state politics, the party leadership is working on bringing Sidhu and other state leaders on same page ahead of the Jalandhar LS byelection.

PPCC chief Raja Warring said he was looking forward to meet Sidhu. “He will be part of the political affairs committee along with other senior leaders,” he said.