Amarinder to take up Sidhu issues with Rahul this week

The ongoing spat between Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and his "outspoken" cabinet colleague Navjot Singh Sidhu is likely to be taken up by the former with party President Rahul Gandhi in their meeting this week in New Delhi, it was learnt on Sunday.

The Chief Minister, who is currently in the national capital for the party's introspection meet following its Lok Sabha debacle, is returning here on late Monday and will go back to meet Gandhi.

"The Chief Minister is meeting Rahul Gandhi later in the week," a senior functionary in the Chief Minister's Office told IANS.

The war of words between the Chief Minister and his Local Bodies Minister intensified when Amarinder Singh blamed Sidhu for party's poor performance in the state's urban areas and said his actions during the parliamentary elections had not only harmed him but also Gandhi.

The cause of the latest provocation was Sidhu's controversial remarks on sacrilege issue as well as blaming the Chief Minister for denial of party ticket to his wife from Chandigarh.

Referring to Sidhu's remarks on the investigation into the sacrilege cases in Bathinda, the seat that the Congress lost to Akali Dal's Harsimrat Kaur Badal by a slender margin of 21,772 votes, the Chief Minister had said the minister evidently did not understand that the SIT had been set up by the Assembly.

The Chief Minister had also reiterated that Sidhu's 'yari and jhappi' (friendship and hug) with the Pakistani Army Chief, Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, would not be tolerated, especially by Indian army personnel, who were being killed by ISI-backed terrorists while he was going hugging their leaders.

Meanwhile, cricketer-turned-politician Sidhu indirectly took a jibe at the Chief Minister by quoting a couplet from a famous ghazal of Iqbal.

"I am not a lone warrior in this universe. I have a plenty of friends now," Sidhu tweeted on Saturday.

(Vishal Gulati can be reached at vishal.g@ians.in)

--IANS

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