Chandigarh: Navjot Singh Sidhu finally broke his silence a day after abruptly resigning as the Punjab Congress chief. He Wednesday raised questions over the appointments of the director general of police and the Punjab’s advocate general. Plunging the Congress into a fresh crisis months ahead of the Assembly elections in Punjab, Sidhu put in his papers Tuesday. Sidhu’s announcement came shortly after the allocation of portfolios to the new ministers of the Charanjit Singh Channi cabinet.
Sidhu took Wednesday to Twitter to explain his stand. Sidhu said his objective had always been to improve the lives of people and ‘to make a difference’. “My fight is for the issues and an agenda of Punjab,” he said in an over four-minute video clip shared on his Twitter handle.
Sidhu was apparently referring to senior IPS officer Iqbal Preet Singh Sahota. He has been given the additional charge of the director general of Punjab Police. Sidhu said, “When I see those who gave clean chit to Badals six years back… such persons have been given the responsibility for delivering justice.”
See video: https://twitter.com/i/status/1443082640689545216
Sahota was the head of a special investigation team formed in 2015 by the then Akali government to probe the sacrilege incidents.
Sidhu also apparently questioned the appointment of APS Deol as Punjab’s new advocate general. “Those who secured blanket bails, they are advocate general,” he said.
Deol is a senior advocate of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and has been a counsel for former Punjab DGP Sumedh Singh Saini. He had been representing the ex-top cop in various cases against him.
The Congress top leadership is trying to placate Sidhu. It reached out to him but Sidhu remained firm in his stand. “I will fight for truth till the last breath,” Sidhu said in the same video.
Others however, have attributed Sidhu’s sudden resignation to the fact that he was not made chief minister of Punjab. However, this has been rumoured by Sidhu’s advisors.