Days after being stripped of key portfolios, Navjot Singh Sidhu, who is at loggerheads with Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, on Monday called on Congress president Rahul Gandhi.
“Met the Congress President, handed him my letter, appraised him of the situation!” Sidhu tweeted on Monday.
Along with the tweet, he posted a picture in which he was standing alongside Gandhi and party leaders Priyanka Vadra Gandhi and Ahmed Patel.
Sidhu, who was allocated Department of Power and New and Renewable Energy Sources, had reportedly failed to assume his new charge.
The rift between the Chief Minister and Sidhu widened with the Amarinder preferring to keep Sidhu out of crucial consultative groups that were announced on Saturday to review progress and make changes, if needed, in the government’s flagship programmes and schemes.
Hours after the first state Cabinet meeting following the Lok Sabha election, the Chief Minister on Thursday rejigged the portfolios of most of the ministers, including Sidhu’s.
Barring four ministers, there were some changes in the portfolios of all the ministers as a result of the reallocation, which the Chief Minister said would help further streamline the government system and processes and bring more transparency and efficacy to various departments.
Most of the ministers, except Sidhu, have assumed their new offices, a senior government functionary told IANS.
The Congress leader has numerous times claimed that has been unfairly singled out for the poor performance of the Congress in the urban areas.
The war of words between the Chief Minister and his Local Bodies Minister intensified when Amarinder Singh blamed Sidhu for party’s poor performance in the state’s urban areas and said his actions during the parliamentary elections had not only harmed him but also Rahul Gandhi.
The cause of provocation was Sidhu’s controversial remarks on sacrilege issue as well as blaming the Chief Minister for denial of party ticket to his wife from Chandigarh.