Chandigarh: Punjab local bodies minister Navjot Singh Sidhu will finally be back in action on Wednesday after recovering from his vocal cord injury. He intends to catch up with chief minister Amarinder Singh with a gift from across the border — a stuffed partridge.
Even though Sidhu is still unsure about making it to the meeting of the state cabinet scheduled for Tuesday, he said he was looking forward to meeting Amarinder to hand over the gift given by a journalist in Pakistan during the ground breaking ceremony of the Kartarpur Sahib corridor. Party leaders close to Amarinder say that he had chirping of partridges as ringtone on his phone during the campaign days for the assembly polls.
Some Congress leaders have been anxious about Sidhu’s return after a fortnight-long hectic campaigning in three poll-bound states to see whether he would clarify things with the chief minister after his ‘Captain’ remark at a press conference in Hyderabad did not go down well with Amarinder loyalists back home.
Sidhu told
TOI
on Monday, “I’m in Delhi on a special fluid tonight and will only be reaching late at night after taking clearance from doctors. For the past few days, I had a thin balm in my throat, and was unable to utter a word. It was very irritating. I will get back to work from Wednesday.”
The cabinet minister has been suggested to keep a longer interval between words and avoid heavy pitch for next one week as preventive treatment continues. The nodules and abrasions in his throat have been cured, bleeding has stopped completely.
Meanwhile, Sidhu referred to a new statement by Pakistan’s foreign affairs minister Shah Mahmood Hussain Qureshi, appreciating the efforts of Sidhu for the Kartarpur Sahib corridor and trying to resolve an old issue. Qureshi also told mediapersons on Sunday that Rs10 million bounty announced for Sidhu’s head was regrettable.
Sidhu could not make it to party president Rahul Gandhi’s function in Mohali on Monday to relaunch ‘Navjivan’ even as the cabinet meeting scheduled for Monday was postponed due to illness of chief minister Amarinder Singh.
Vibhor Mohan is Special Correspondent with The Times of India’s P...
Read MoreVibhor Mohan is Special Correspondent with The Times of India’s Punjab Bureau at Chandigarh. He holds post-graduate degrees in Mass Communication and English and has nearly 15 years of experience, having covered important stations in Punjab. He covers news concerning Punjab politics, NRI affairs and the power sector, besides specializing in writing on architecture, especially on the works of Le Corbusier, the man who gave India its first designed city – Chandigarh.
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