The BJP was left red-faced on Monday as party leader and recently-nominated MP Navjot Singh Sidhu resigned from his Rajya Sabha seat on the first day of the Monsoon Session, amid speculation of his joining the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Sidhu’s resignation was accepted with immediate effect by Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari.
All this is despite Sidhu’s refusal to campaign in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, especially in Amritsar, where his one-time mentor Arun Jaitley contested. Jaitley had been Sidhu’s biggest defender around the time he was convicted by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in a road rage case. Jaitley was instrumental, not only in him getting relief from the Supreme Court, which had stayed his conviction, but also in getting him re-nominated from Amritsar as the party’s official candidate.
“He is an ambitious, ungrateful person,” said a BJP leader. “He turned against someone (Jaitley) who saved his life and political career.” There was resentment in the party about why he was promoted to the extent of having been given the Rajya Sabha nomination when there were other deserving candidates.
The other Navjot His wife, Navjot Kaur, too had caused a lot of embarrassment to the BJP on April 1, when she announced her resignation from the party. “The burden is over,” she had written on her Facebook post on April 1, but reconciled after a meeting with top BJP leaders in Delhi. “All is well,” she had said, claiming to be very much a part of the BJP.
AAP’s Sikh giant? Meanwhile, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s first reaction was that it would welcome Sidhu into the party but without any condition. The AAP’s popularity in Punjab is increasing in the run-up to the Assembly polls due early next year. However, the AAP’s biggest problem is that it does not have a Sikh face to combat the towering figures of Prakash Singh Badal of BJP ally SAD and the Congress’ Amarinder Singh. Sidhu’s entry in AAP was being analysed in this context.
“If he joins our party, we will welcome him with open arms,” said AAP’s Sangrur MP Bhagwant Mann, who is also the party’s campaign committee chairman. Mann denied that Sidhu had approached the AAP or vice-versa. “He has not got in touch with us nor have we got in touch with him,” he said.
Asked if Sidhu could be made the AAP’s Chief Ministerial candidate in case he decides to take the plunge, Mann said, “Whoever joins AAP, he is clearly told that it has to be unconditional. Even when I had joined AAP, I had said that I will be happy if I am assigned just the duty of pasting posters of the party. I want to make it clear that there is no race for any post in our party...the CM candidate will be decided by the party.”
“But as party’s campaign committee chairman, I want to say that our doors are open. Sidhu is a good orator with a clean image, who has also remained a star campaigner of his party. May be now, he finds that he does not enjoy that much freedom to express himself (in BJP),” Mann said.
AAP’s in-charge of Punjab affairs Sanjay Singh tweeted: “ Sidhu has taken a brave step by resigning from membership of Rajya Sabha and I welcome his decision.”