Never opposed Navjot Singh Sidhu, will decide on his resignation after seeing letter: Amarinder Singh

Hours after Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu announced that he has sent his resignation letter to the Chief Minister, Captain Amarinder Singh said that he will decide on it after seeing the letter and clarified that he never had any issue with the former-cricketer-turned politician.

“I have no issues with him, I had in fact given him a very important portfolio after the reshuffle. It was his decision to quit the Cabinet. I have been told that he has sent the letter to my office, will go through it and then see what is to be done,” Captain Amarinder Singh was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

“I have never opposed Mrs Sidhu, in fact I was the one who recommended to Rahul Ji that she contests from Bathinda. It was Sidhu who said that his wife will not contest from Bathinda but from Chandigarh. So it was not for him to decide this, party decides these things,” he added.

Sidhu today sent his resignation letter to the Chief Minister’s office a day after he announced that he had resigned from the state cabinet.

"Today I have sent my resignation to the Chief Minister Punjab, has been delivered at his official residence...," he tweeted.

Sidhu, who has been at loggerheads with Singh and was stripped off key portfolios in the cabinet reshuffle on June 6, had written a letter to then Congress President Rahul Gandhi on June 10. He had met Gandhi in Delhi on June 9.

"I hereby resign as Minister from the Punjab Cabinet," Sidhu had said in the letter, which he made public through Twitter on Sunday.

In another tweet, Sidhu had said he would be sending his resignation letter to the chief minister.

Singh had divested Sidhu of the Local Government and Tourism and Cultural Affairs departments and allotted him the Power and New and Renewable Energy portfolio.

Ever since the portfolio reshuffle exercise, the Punjab minister and his wife Navjot Kaur have been maintaining a distance from the media.

Sidhu, a former BJP leader who had joined the Congress just ahead of the 2017 Punjab assembly polls, has been having differences with Singh for sometime now.

The tension between Singh and his cabinet colleague had come to fore last month when the chief minister blamed Sidhu for the "inept handling" of the Local Government Department, claiming that it resulted in "poor performance" of the Congress in urban areas in the Lok Sabha polls.

With PTI Inputs