Sidhu appoints 4 advisers, picks MP, ex-IPS officer

The four advisers include Lok Sabha member Dr Amar Singh, former IPS officer Mohammad Mustafa, Dr Pyare Lal Garg and Malwinder Singh Mali

Punjab Congress president Navjot Singh Sidhu on Wednesday appointed four advisers, including Lok Sabha member Dr Amar Singh and former IPS officer Mohammad Mustafa, to seek their “wise counsel” on party affairs in the state.

Sidhu appoints 4 advisers, picks MP, ex-IPS officer

The four advisers, who also include Dr Pyare Lal Garg and Malwinder Singh Mali, have been appointed with immediate effect. “I personally hold each of them in high regard, for their vision and work to envisage a better future for every Punjabi,” he wrote in the appointment order.

Sidhu was appointed the Punjab Congress president by the party leadership last month despite strong opposition from chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh. The party also appointed four working presidents with him.

Amar Singh, a retired 1981-batch IAS officer of Madhya Pradesh cadre, is currently MP from Fatehgarh Sahib. He had worked with Sidhu as his adviser when the latter was the local government minister in the present government. The former bureaucrat quit the position in February 2018 and then got elected as MP in 2019.

Mustafa’s wife Razia Sultana is a cabinet minister and has sided with Sidhu. A retired IPS officer of the 1985-batch, Mustafa was among those superseded by 1987-batch officer Dinkar Gupta when he was appointed the state police chief by the Amarinder Singh government in February 2019. He challenged the appointment in the court.

Garg is a social activist and former registrar of Baba Farid University of Health Sciences.

Mali retired from government service where he worked with the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) as a script writer and now regularly comments on political affairs on social media and television channels. He has been severely criticising Amarinder.