Punjab CM Amarinder Singh accepts Navjot Singh Sidhu’s resignation

Forwards the letter to the Governor for formal acceptance

A file picture of Navjot Singh Sidhu with Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh.

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Saturday accepted the resignation of Navjot Singh Sidhu from the Cabinet.

“Captain Amarinder Singh has accepted Navjot Singh Sidhu’s one-line resignation and forwarded the same to the Governor,” said an official spokesperson.

The spokesperson added that the Chief Minister, who had been indisposed for the last two days since arrival from Delhi, forwarded the letter to Punjab Governor V.P.S. Badnore for formal acceptance.

Mr. Sidhu had sent his resignation on June 10 to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and tweeted the same more than a month later. Thereafter, he had tweeted that he would formally send his papers to the Chief Minister, in whose Cabinet he had been allocated the Power Ministry as part of a reshuffle post the Lok Sabha elections. He finally sent his resignation to the Chief Minister’s official residence.

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After the Cabinet reshuffle on June 6, the Chief Minister divested Mr. Sidhu of the Local Bodies portfolio and allocated him the Power and New and Renewable Energy Sources portfolios. However, Mr. Sidhu, instead of taking charge of the new Ministry, approached the party’s Central leadership to express his displeasure and appraised the “high command’’ of being singled out “unfairly’’ in the Cabinet rejig on the pretext of the party’s “poor performance” in the urban areas of the State in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

Capt. Singh recently said if Mr. Sidhu did not want to do his job, there was nothing he could do about it.

Capt. Singh and Mr. Sidhu have been at loggerheads since the Lok Sabha poll. It started with Mr. Sidhu’s wife Navjot Kaur Sidhu accusing Capt. Singh of blocking her Lok Sabha ticket from Chandigarh. Later, the Chief Minister blamed Mr. Sidhu for not handling his department well, which he claimed had resulted in the Congress’s “poor performance” in urban areas in the general election.