In what could be the final step towards coming into the Congress fold, former BJP MP and cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu on Tuesday had a 45-minute meeting with Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi. Sidhu could be fielded from the prestigious Amritsar Assembly constituency.
The meeting happened on a day when the Congress was routed out in Chandigarh Municipal polls and assumes significance as the party is all set to release more names of its candidates for the upcoming Assembly polls.
There was no official word as to what transpired at the meet, but it had significance as this was Sidhu’s first meeting with Rahul Gandhi after his wife Navjot Kaur joined the party late last month.
Sidhu’s entry into the Congress has been speculated for a long time now. Sidhu was earlier in talks with AAP but it did not materialise leading to a split in his recently formed outfit Awaaz-E-Punjab.
While Sidhu is all set to get a bigger role within the party soon after he joins, he has simultaneously expressed his keenness to contest from the Amritsar (East) constituency, which is currently being held by his wife.
Sidhu had resigned from the primary membership of the BJP in September 2016 days after he was nominated by BJP in Rajya Sabha.
The three-time Amritsar MP later floated the Awaaz-e-Punjab party, which was alleged to be the “B-team of the RSS” by Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal.
However, Simarjit Singh Bains and Balwinder Singh Bains, two independent MlAs of the party, announced their resignation during the special session of the Assembly on November 16 in Chandigarh and joined the Aam Aadmi Party. This move by the Bains brothers is speculated as the reason for Sidhu coming close to the Congress. Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh had earlier said he had no “reservation whatsoever” to Sidhu and other leaders of Awaaz-e-Punjab joining the Congress.