Karnataka polls: Punjab leaders missing from Cong star campaigners’ list

Navjot Singh Sidhu, former cabinet minister of Punjab, has been left out of the Congress' star campaigners list for the upcoming Karnataka assembly elections. Sidhu's absence from the list has surprised party leaders in the state, who expected him to campaign for the party in the crucial poll battle. The Congress has also released its list of 40 star campaigners for the May 10 Jalandhar bypoll.

A list of star campaigners released by the Congress on Wednesday for the upcoming Karnataka assembly elections has no party leader from Punjab with former cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu being the most conspicuous omission from the state.

The Congress also released its list of 40 star campaigners for the May 10 Jalandhar bypoll.

While Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, leader of Opposition Partap Singh Bajwa and most other state unit leaders are busy campaigning for the party candidate Karamjit Kaur Chaudhary for the Jalandhar Lok Sabha bypoll, speculations were rife in party circles that Sidhu may be included by the Congress leadership among the star campaigners in the crucial poll battle in Karnataka.

Sidhu’s supporters, who have been angling for a role for the cricketer-turned-politician in the party, were expecting the assembly poll campaign to be an opportunity for him to bounce back after he lost his assembly seat in the 2022 state election and then remained in jail for nearly 10 months in a road rage case.

His absence in the list appears to have taken the party leaders in the state by surprise. “Sidhu has been a star campaigner for the Congress in many elections right from the time he joined the party in January 2017. I do not know why he has been kept out,” a former MLA said. Another leader from Doaba said the former minister will address at least three to four rallies in Jalandhar in the next few days.

Though the cricketer-turned-politician was not among the star campaigners of the Congress in Karnataka in the 2018 assembly polls also, he addressed 64 rallies in 17 days in the state assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan later in the year. Sidhu’s office had also claimed that of the 64 assembly segments covered by him, the party won 50 of them, with a strike rate of 78%.

Party also releases list of star campaigners for Jalandhar bypoll

The Congress also released its list of 40 star campaigners for the May 10 Jalandhar bypoll. Punjab ex-chief ministers Charanjit Singh Channi and Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, Partap Singh Bajwa, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Ambika Soni, OP Soni, Manish Tewari, Ravneet Singh Bittu, Sukhpal Khaira, Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot, Himachal Pradesh CM Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, Punjab party in-charge Harish Chaudhary, Haryana ex-CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Uttarakhand ex-CM Harish Rawat and Rajasthan ex-deputy CM Sachin Pilot are among the party leaders selected for campaigning in the Parliamentary constituency.