Punjab Congress loses another Hindu face, Anish Sidana joins Shiromani Akali Dal

SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal appoints Sidana as his political adviser for urban affairs; clarifies Harsimrat will not contest Punjab elections early next year

In a setback to the ruling Congress in Punjab, Anish Sidana, the party unit’s intellectual cell chairman, joined the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in Chandigarh on Thursday.

Punjab Congress intellectual cell chairman Anish Sidana with Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal after joining the SAD at the party’s Chandigarh headquarters on Thursday. (HT Photo)

SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal inducted him into the party and announced that Sidana, who is a senior leader from the Hindu community, will be his political adviser for urban affairs. With the assembly elections barely two months away, Sukhbir asked Sidana to focus on the SAD campaign in the urban areas.

Sidana’s exit comes after another senior Hindu leader Raman Behl left the Congress and joined the Aam Aadmi Party on November 9. The Congress is facing the challenge of retaining its Hindu leaders.

Sidana, a member of the Kandi Area Development Board (KADB) till a few months ago, belongs to Jalalabad and had been voicing his concerns regarding the lack of adequate representation in the state Congress. On October 31, he even wrote an open letter to Congress leader Sonia Gandhi, citing indiscipline in the party.

On the Congress demand to make the special task force (STF) report in the drugs case public since it has been submitted in a sealed cover to the Punjab and Haryana high court, Sukhbir said that the matter was sub judice and he would not want to comment on it.

“But what stopped the Congress government from acting against drug traffickers during its four-and-a-half-year term? No one has been arrested so far. The Congress government is only politicising the matter by targeting us (SAD). They could have released the report. I challenge them to cite a single piece of evidence against Akali leaders instead of attempting to frame them in false charges,” he said.