Punjab Lok Congress is the name of Amarinder Singh’s new party

New Delhi, Nov 2: Former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Tuesday announced that Punjab Lok Congress is the name of his new political outfit which is yet to get approval from the Election Commission.

The 79-year-old took Twitter to announce the news of him sending his resignation to Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi with the list of reasons why he was quitting the grand old party.

In the 7-page letter, Amarinder Singh has spoken about his journey in politics, why he quit his party before rejoining the Congress over the request of the then Congress President Sitaram Kesari.

The former CM has also listed out his achievements and reveals how Manmohan Singh was on the verge of dismissing the Punjab government for terminating all the underlying River Waters agreements, thereby removing the substratum of the Supreme Court judgment.

He claimed that Sonia Gandhi refused to give him an appointment for nine months following the incident. Singh then slams Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu.

In the resignation letter, Amarinder Singh says that Sidhu was appointed as the state chief despite his opposition.

"Despite my profound reservations and over the unanimous advice of almost all the MPs from Punjab, you chose to appoint an acolyte of the Pakistani deep state Navjot Sidhu who had publicly hugged the Pakistan Army Chief Gen Bajwa and Prime Minister Imran Khan, as the President of the Punjab Congress Committee. Khan and Bajwa are the people responsible for sending terrorists across the border to kill Indians," he said.

Taking on Sidhu, he writes, "Sidhu's only claim to fame was that he would abuse me and my government on a regular basis. I am old enough to be his father but that did not stop him from using the filthiest and most vile language against me both publicly and privately."

The former Punjab CM also accused the Gandhis patronising Sidhu. He said, "Unfortunately rather than being reined in, he was patronised by Rahul and Priyanka, while you chose to turn a blind eye to the shenanigans of this gentleman who was aided and abetted by the General Secretary In-charge abetted by the General Secretary In-charge Harish Rawat, perhaps the most dubious individual I had the occasion to make acquaintance off.

The senior politician then slams the Congress for joining hands with Shiv Sena after calling the party "communal" for decades.

Singh also accused the party of conspiring against him to remove him from the post of Chief Minister. "However the most egregious act was the midnight conspiracy carried out against me at your and your children's behest by calling a CLP meeting over my head in the dead of the night and that too through Twitter. It was my prerogative as the CLP leader to have called the meeting if the AICC desired it It was only early next morning that a colleague informed me that such an outrageous act has been committed,"

He added, "I immediately realized that the intention was to belittle and humiliate this self respecting old solider. You called me at 10.15 AM the next morning and asked me to resign I did so without batting even an eyelid. However, the crude manner in which the whole operation was executed by the undertakers of the AICC left a very foul taste in the mouth."