Sidhu calls ex-MLAs home, but doesn’t discuss party crisis in Amritsar civic body

The meeting was called at Sidhu’s residence on a day when other former Congress MLAs Inderbir Singh Bolaria, OP Soni and Raj Kumar Verka from Amritsar addressed a meeting of party councillors asking them to bring a no confidence motion against Mayor Rintu.

Uploading the photograph on Twitter, Sidhu said that it was meeting between the friends. Former MLA from Amritsar North Sunil Dutti, who was pushed to the third place in the elections, said that it was meeting for political assessment and more such meetings will be held in future.

“Sidhu had called us. We discussed future strategy about how to continue the fight. We will call next meeting very soon. More leaders may come in next meeting. We decided that we will get out and meet the party workers,” said Dutti.

“Whole Punjab is saying that Sidhu is an honest leader and against corruption. People are looking at him. Sidhu has always said that he loves Punjab. So it is obvious that he should lead,” said Dutti.
Asked if anything was discussed about the challenge thrown by Amritsar Mayor, he said, “This issue was not discussed. We didn’t discuss local issues.”

Councillors ‘remove’ mayor, commissioner terms it illegal
In the 85-member Amritsar Municipal Corporation, a total of 56 Congress councillors gathered at the civic body office Monday to express no-confidence in Mayor Rintu, who had joined AAP in run up to the Assembly elections and claimed support of 18 councillors.

The Congress councillors also elected senior deputy Mayor Raman Bakshi as Mayor. However, MCASandeep Rishi termed the meeting as not valid to remove mayor.

A 40-minute high voltage drama started at 3:50 pm when the councillors first marked their presence on register and then reached the commissioner’s office. However, commissoner informed them that the meeting scheduled for the day was already canceled. Councillors stressed that the special meeting cannot be cancelled according to the local body Act. Besides, commissioner insisted that the Mayor has the right to call or cancel the meeting. This discussion turned into arguments. Later, At 4.10, the councillors presented a no-confidence motion against Rintu, which was approved by everyone by show of hands. Later, the councillors voted for Raman Bakshi for the Mayor’s post.

After declaring Raman Bakshi as Mayor, the councillors took him to his own office (of senior deputy mayor) and made him sit on the chair there. The councillors gave him a siropa and greeted him with the slogans of Mayor Raman Bakshi. Then Bakshi, deputy mayor Yunus Kumar, councillors Vikas Soni, Rajkanwalpreet Singh Lucky started moving towards the mayor’s office, but were stopped by the security personnel.

Later, the Commissioner said, “There was no meeting in the corporation today. The special meeting of the House was canceled by the Mayor on March 17. The councilors had come to meet, but at the same time they started running parallel meetings, which is illegal. According to the law, if the Mayor has canceled the meeting, then no one has the right to hold the meeting.”