Punjab / Release report on drugs, else will start strike: Sidhu to Punjab govt

New Delhi: Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu today said that he will go on a hunger strike against Charanjit Singh Channi government if it doesn’t make public the reports on drugs menace and the sacrilege incident.

This is not the first time Sidhu has opened a front against his own government.

He continuously attacked the Amarinder Singh government over the desecration of a Sikh religious text in Punjab’s Faridkot in 2015, and the police firing that led to the death of two people.

Sacrilege and police firing was the key issue that fuelled the feud between the two.

After Amarinder was forced to resign from the top post, the Congress high command appointed Chaani as the new CM.

However, Sidhu, who is playing the role of his party’s “conscience-keeper”, continued his attack on the Channi government. He further resigned from the post of Punjab Congress chief Sidhu saying he was unhappy with some of the appointments.

Accusing the Channi government of corruption, Sidhu in a video message shared on Twitter, said that he worked to ensure the removal of tainted leaders and officers from the system but now that they have returned he will not allow that to happen.

Later, after several rounds of discussions with Harish Rawat and party leaders, he agreed to take back his resignation.

Channi blinked first and replaced Advocate General APS Deol with DS Patwalia.

Sidhu was against Deol as he had represented former Punjab DGP Sumedh Singh Saini in the 2015 cases linked to the police firing incidents.

Another sign of the ongoing tussle between the CM and Sidhu was the non-inclusion of Amritsar (East) MLA’s name from the list of Punjab Congress delegation that visited Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan.

CM Channi was accompanied by some of his Cabinet ministers, Congress MLAs and Sidhu offered prayers at Kartarpur at a later date.