New Delhi: Cricketer-turned former Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu is reconciled to accept either the post of a deputy chief minister or head of the party's campaign committee for the 2022 Assembly elections, after former Congress President Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi, an AICC general secretary, rejected his repeated demand on Wednesday to head the Punjab Congress Committee to replace Sunil Jakhar.
He was told that both the chief minister and the PCC chief cannot be the Jat Sikhs as the party has decided to rather include more Dalit and Hindu leaders to balance the caste equations. The party sources said Chief Minister Capt. Amarinder Singh was rung up by Priyanka to inform him about the outcome of the discussions with Sidhu. They said Amarinder left it up to Rahul to decide either way as uppermost is retaining the state in the Assembly elections.
They said Congress President Sonia Gandhi summoned to Delhi Rajya Sabha Opposition leader Mallikarjun Kharge, who has gone to hometown Bengaluru, for discussions on a 3-member panel he heads to solve the Punjab crisis. The panel, which also includes in-charge AICC general secretary Harish Rawat and former Delhi MP J P Agarwal, has to give its second report to Sonia to facilitate the changes in both the Punjab government and the organisation.
Sources said the chief minister had already conveyed to the Kharge panel during his last visit to Delhi that he would prefer to induct a Dalit or a Hindu leader as the deputy CM and not Sidhu, who had quit as a minister in July 2019 after he was divested of the minister for local government.
He had also told the panel that he has no ego panel in working with Sidhu if the party high command wants him to handle the campaign. His only condition is that he must get a free hand in the selection of the candidates as the chief minister's face in the elections.
Meanwhile, Rawat has reportedly urged Sonia Gandhi to free him from the Punjab responsibility as he wants to return to Uttarakhand to be the party's face in the Assembly elections early next year.
A score of Uttarakhand MLAs and leaders are camping in Delhi and could be seen lobbying to declare Rawat as the chief ministerial candidate.
