Sidhu may join Aap on I-day eve as ‘star campaigner’ in Punjab

NEW DELHI: Former Bharatiya Janata Party lawmaker Navjot Singh Sidhu is likely to join the Aam Aadmi Party on August 14 and plunge into the campaign for the Punjab

NEW DELHI: Former Bharatiya Janata Party lawmaker Navjot Singh Sidhu is likely to join the Aam Aadmi Party on August 14 and plunge into the campaign for the Punjab assembly elections from the next day, sources in the party have said.

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The cricketer-turned-politician who stunned his party on July 19 by suddenly resigning from the Rajya Sabha to which he had been nominated just two months ago, will be one of the AAP’s chief campaigners in Punjab. He will not be named its chief ministerial candidate, a member of the party’s top body, the Political Affairs Committee (PAC) told HT. The move is seen as a symbiotic boost for the AAP on one side and the three-time Amritsar MP and his legislator wife, who will follow suit, on the other.

For days after he quit the Rajya Sabha, Sidhu remained incommunicado. On the day of his resignation, his wife Navjot Kaur Sidhu – who is a BJP MLA in Punjab and Chief Parliamentary Secretary – said it implied he had quit the party. When Sidhu finally surfaced and made a brief statement to the media on July 25, he did not say he had quit the BJP nor clarify on where he was headed.

“Rashtra dharma (duty towards the nation) is the most superior. How can Navjot Singh Sidhu stay away from his motherland,” Sidhu said in his brief appearance before the media in New Delhi, where he did not field questions. “No party in this world is above or greater than Punjab ... If it comes to choosing between my family, my party and Punjab, I will choose Punjab a hundred times.”

Delhi Chief minister and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal tweeted after Sidhu’s July 24 press conference: “Sidhu wud hv spoken against drugs, if he went to Punjab. BJP prevented him. Who was BJP trying to protect? Shocking (sic).”