Chandigarh: Under fire over his controversial comments on Kashmir, Malvinder Singh Mali quit Friday as adviser to Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu. However, Mali did not term it as a ‘resignation’. He posted a statement posted on his Facebook page and said, “I humbly submit that I withdraw my consent given for tendering suggestions to Navjot Singh Sidhu.”
In another Facebook post, Mali claimed that the question of his resignation does not arise as he never accepted the post. “Neither accepted any post, nor resigned from any post,” Mali said in Punjabi.
Amid a power tussle in Punjab, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had asked Sidhu on Sunday to ‘rein in’ his advisers after two of them made ‘atrocious’ comments recently on sensitive issues like Kashmir and Pakistan. AICC general secretary Harish Rawat, who is in charge of Punjab affairs, had also said that the two advisers need to go.
Sidhu, August 11 had appointed Mali, a former government teacher and political analyst, and Pyare Lal Garg, a former registrar of Baba Farid University of Health and Sciences, as his advisers to seek their ‘wise counsel’
In his post, Mali said, “Anti-Punjab and anti-Sikh forces, which cannot tolerate the Punjab model and politics of transparency and accountability that has emerged in the backdrop of a peaceful and long-drawn farmers’ agitation, have a nefarious designs to derail the dialogue process that has started taking shape… To fight with tied hands (against such forces) is unacceptable to me and rejecting the same I humbly submit that I withdraw my consent for giving suggestions to Navjot Singh Sidhu.”
Mali said he had long been part of a struggle in favour of Punjab, for the downtrodden, human rights, religious minorities, federalism and democratic values, and he would continue to fight for them.
Mali further alleged that in the backdrop of the alleged hateful propaganda launched against his views by some political leaders, if he faces any physical harm then these people shall be responsible for it.
In a recent social media post, Mali had waded into the issue of revocation of Article 370 of the Constitution which gave special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. He had reportedly said if Kashmir was a part of India, then what was the need to have Articles 370 and 35A. He had also said, ‘Kashmir is a country of Kashmiri people’.
Garg, another adviser of Sidhu, had reportedly questioned the chief minister’s criticism of Pakistan.