Day After Rahul Gandhi's 'Snub', Navjot Singh Sidhu Meets Priyanka Gandhi Amid Punjab Crisis

Punjab MLA Navjot Singh Sidhu on Wednesday met Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in Delhi, a day after Rahul Gandhi dismissed the “fuss” around a “no meeting” with the Punjab leader.

“There is no meeting. I don’t know what fuss you are making…,” Rahul Gandhi told reporters while leaving his Tughlaq Lane residence on Tuesday.

He was asked if he was meeting Sidhu, as claimed by the former Punjab minister’s office.

Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi are trying to bring all Congress leaders, including Sidhu, on a common platform and present a united Congress ahead of elections.

Rahul Gandhi has been meeting leaders from Punjab over the past few days amid the ongoing infighting in Punjab Congress and ahead of an impending revamp of the party and the state cabinet.

The Congress leadership is all set for a revamp of the state unit in Punjab ahead of next year’s assembly elections.

Rahul Gandhi has met a number of ministers, MLAs and MPs including Brahm Mohindra, Vijay Inder Singla, Balbir Singh Sidhu and Rajya Sabha member Shamsher Singh Dullo and MLA Lakhvir Singh Lakha.

He has already met state Congress chief Sunil Jakhar and Rajya Sabha member and former Punjab Congress chief Partap Singh Bajwa.

Sidhu, who had resigned from the Punjab Cabinet after he was divested of the local bodies portfolio in 2019, has been at loggerheads with Chief Minister Amarinder Singh. He has attacked the chief minister over the alleged delay in justice in the 2015 incidents of sacrilege and subsequent police firing.

Singh had slammed Sidhu for continuously attacking him over the sacrilege issue and termed the former’s outbursts ‘total indiscipline’.

Early this month, Sidhu appeared before a three-member panel set up by the Congress to resolve the infighting within the party’s state unit.

On June 22, Singh appeared before the panel, headed by Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, in Delhi. However, he returned to Chandigarh without an audience with party president Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi.

AICC general secretary in-charge of Punjab affairs Harish Rawat and former MP J P Aggarwal are members of the panel.

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