Punjab Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh on Thursday said he would order reinvestigation into the SIT clean chit in the drug racket case in which Bikram Singh Majithia was implicated and throw behind bars all those found guilty in the drug trade, once elected.Flanked by Amritsar East candidate Navjot Singh Sidhu and all other assembly and Lok Sabha bypoll candidates of the party from Amritsar, Captain Amarinder made it clear that Sidhu had joined the Congress without any preconditions and would be the party’s star campaigner in these polls.“He is a foot soldier of the party, and has joined without any conditions. He never put forth any conditions,” said Captain Amarinder, expressing happiness at Sidhu’s support at their first joint press conference and describing himself as the ex-cricketer’s wicketkeeper.
On AAP allegations of being soft on Parkash Singh Badal, an aggressive Captain Amarinder asked if the media wanted him to thrash Badal. He pointed out that he had chosen to contest from Lambi to defeat Badal and was confident of a sweeping victory against the Akali leader. From Malout to Lambi, where he had gone to file nominations and campaign on Wednesday, the mood was against the Badals and people wanted him to defeat the chief minister hands down, said the Punjab Congress president.With the party’s nine candidates from the region by his side, Captain Amarinder also exuded confidence that his party would win all the nine seats in Majha.Pointing to the state’s total ruin under the Badal rule, Captain Amarinder said he needed 2/3rd majority to make a real difference and bring Punjab back on the path to progress.To a question on the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) threat to the Congress in these polls, Captain Amarinder said the party was in the doldrums, with no connect to Punjab and had kept Punjabis out of the electoral battle because they had no interest in the welfare of the people of the state. That was why so many AAP workers, including founding members, were joining Congress, he said, adding that several AAP leaders were entering the party fold in Amritsar today, with another 2500 of their workers joining in Jalandhar.He regretted that he had to cancel his Darbar Sahib visit, saying he would make it a point to come to the Golden Temple soon. The visit had to be cancelled since, knowing Akalis’ penchant for playing mischief, he had asked all the MLA and MP candidates to go for the scrutiny of their papers, said Captain Amarinder.To another question, he expressed the confidence that the minor dissidence triggered in the Congress by the ticket allocation would be controlled and the party’s poll outcome would not be impacted.
Responding to media queries, Sidhu quashed all speculation on his vying for a post in the next Congress government, saying “son is son, and father is father.”Interjecting in response to a hypothetical question posed to Captain Amarinder if he would accept Sidhu as the chief minister, the cricketer-turned-politician and newcomer to the Congress ranks quipped, “If aunty becomes a man then she would be called uncle.”Declaring that he was there because of Captain, Sidhu asserted that he would go to Lambi as campaigner to give Badal a bigger thrashing.Sidhu dismissed AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal as a confused man who was losing his mind as he was feeling the heat in the Punjab polls, saying he was making all sorts of senseless allegations out of sheer bewilderment.He rejected AAP claim that they had offered him deputy CM post with a jestful `Haathi chaale wich bazaar, Hazaran mate cheekhan naal naal’ (When the elephant is on the roll, there are thousands who start screaming).Responding on Sidhu’s behalf to a question on his stand on demonetisation, Captain Amarinder said his stand was the same as that of the Congress, of which he was a part. Even on Wednesday, he saw long queues outside banks, the PPCC chief said.To another question, Captain Amarinder said he had promised Mrs. Navjot Kaur Sidhu that she would be accommodated in the government following the elections. “My wife also vacated her seat for me,” he quipped.