- Monday, February 24, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
POLL strategist Prashant Kishor on Tuesday (13) met former Congress president Rahul Gandhi at his residence in Delhi, days after meeting veteran leader Sharad Pawar of the Nationalist Congress Party. Other senior leaders Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, KC Venugopal, who is also a Rajya Sabha member, and Harish Rawat, who is the Congress’s in-charge for the poll-bound northern state of Punjab, were also present at the meeting.
Interestingly, Vadra was supposed to visit Lucknow on Tuesday for preparations for elections in the key state of Uttar Pradesh in 2022 but it has now been postponed, reports said.
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The hours-long meeting took place at a time when the grand-old party of India is trying hard to resolve the infighting within its Punjab unit where state chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh and senior leader Navjot Singh Sidhu have locked horns over several issues just ahead of the assembly elections also scheduled next year.
Sulking Punjab Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu meets Priyanka Gandhi Vadra
Both Gandhi and Vadra recently met Singh and Sidhu separately in recent weeks where they tried to settle the crisis in Punjab, one of the few remaining states that the Congress rules in the country at the moment. Singh also met Congress chief Sonia Gandhi during his second visit to Delhi recently and said after the meeting that they discussed both the state’s development as well as the party’s “internal matters” and he would accept whatever decision the high command took.
Sidhu’s AAP tweet
Meanwhile, speculation was rife over Sidhu’s future plans. The cricketer-turned-politician, who joined the Congress in 2017 after leaving the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has been tweeting on several issues of late and on Tuesday, he said in a post that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has always recognised his vision and work for Punjab. Others said the politician’s remark was a jibe at the AAP. The latter has emerged as a prominent player in Punjab since its birth in 2012 and will throw a major challenge to the ruling Congress and opposition Shiromani Akali Dal in the 2022 polls.
Sidhu’s profile picture on Twitter though shows him in the company of Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi.
Our opposition AAP has always recognised my vision & work for Punjab. Be it Before 2017- Beadbi, Drugs, Farmers Issues, Corruption & Power Crisis faced by People of Punjab raised by me or today as I present “Punjab Model” It is clear they know – who is really fighting for Punjab. https://t.co/6AmEYhSP67 pic.twitter.com/7udIIGkq1l
— Navjot Singh Sidhu (@sherryontopp) July 13, 2021
Kishor and Pawar met in Mumbai on June 11 and Delhi 10 days later amid buzz that an effort was on to form a national front of opposition parties against the ruling BJP of prime minister Narendra Modi ahead of the 2024 general elections.
