Amarinder Singh: The man who got the Congress back in the saddle in Punjab
One of the strongest regional satraps of the Congress, Amarinder Singh was the leader who put the party back in the saddle after an intense electoral battle in Punjab that devastated the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). ) crushed the dream. To expand its footprint beyond Delhi.
The 79-year-old widely respected and popular leader led the Congress to a resounding victory in 2017 in the 117-member Assembly to capture the chief minister’s post for the second time.
The victory of the ‘Maharaja’ in Punjab after 10 years had also revived the hopes of revival of the old party. But now all is not looking well in the state unit of the party as more than 50 MLAs have written to Congress President Sonia Gandhi demanding the replacement of Singh as the Chief Minister, a development that will take place ahead of the assembly elections in the state. Arrives about four months ago.
Singh has now decided to resign from the post of Chief Minister. Belonging to a very rare breed of politicians who saw action in the Indo-Pak war, Singh tasted success in the 2017 elections, when Akali Dal supremo Parkash Singh Badal thwarted his previous attempts to become chief minister in 2007 and 2012. done.
Navjot Singh Sidhu left the BJP and joined the Congress a few months before the elections. There were speculations that he would be given the post of Deputy Chief Minister, but he was made a cabinet minister. The relationship between him and the Chief Minister was never cordial.
Just two years after the Congress came to power, Sidhu was dropped from key portfolios in a cabinet reshuffle in June 2019 and then resigned from the state cabinet. Singh had separated Sidhu from the local government and tourism and cultural affairs departments and allotted him the power and new and renewable energy portfolios, though Sidhu never assumed charge of his new department.
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Soon after, Sidhu contacted the then Congress President Rahul Gandhi and “apprised him of the situation”.
The tension between Singh and Sidhu came to the fore. While Singh blamed him for the “inept operation” of the local government department, claiming that the (2019) Lok Sabha elections resulted in the “poor performance” of the Congress in urban areas, the former cricketer said on the other hand” (Congress chief ) Rahul Gandhi is my captain…Rahul Gandhi is also the captain of the captain (Singh).”
However, things took a turn for the worse and eventually, despite strong opposition from Singh, Sidhu was appointed the state Congress president. Once an Akali Dal leader, Singh, a ‘descendant of Patiala’, fought in the 1965 war in his short army career.
The son of the late Maharaja Yadvendra Singh of Patiala, Singh did his early schooling at the Lawrence School, Sanawar and Doon School in Dehradun, before joining the National Defense Academy, Kharagwasla in 1959 and graduating from there in 1963.
Commissioned into the Indian Army in 1963, he was posted in 2nd Bn. The Sikh Regiment (both his father and grandfather served in the battalion) served in the Field Area – Indo-Tibetan Border for two years and was appointed Ad-de-Camp to Lt Gen Harbaksh Singh, GOC-in-C Western Command to be done.
Considered close to the late Rajiv Gandhi, Singh’s political career began in January 1980 when he was elected an MP. But in 1984, during Operation Blue Star, he resigned from the Congress and the Lok Sabha in protest against the entry of the army into the Golden Temple.
After joining the Akali Dal in August 1985, Singh was elected to the Punjab Legislative Assembly on an Akali Dal (Longowal) ticket in the 1995 elections. During his first term as chief minister (2002–07), his government in 2004 passed a state law abolishing Punjab’s water sharing agreement with neighboring states.
Last year, his government brought in four bills, which were later passed by the state assembly to “counter the controversial agriculture law enacted by Parliament”.
In his second term, his government also announced a loan waiver of crores of rupees for the laborers and the landless farming community under the farm loan waiver scheme. Singh contested the 2014 Lok Sabha election from Amritsar and defeated BJP’s Arun Jaitley by a margin of over one lakh votes.
He resigned as an MP in November after the Supreme Court ruled Punjab’s 2004 Act nullifying the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal agreement as unconstitutional.
A few days later, he was again appointed as the President of the Punjab Congress for the elections. A widely traveled man, Singh has authored several books including his memoirs of the 1965 Indo-Pak war.
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