Capt-Sidhu fight like father and son… happens in a family: Manpreet Badal

Asked to comment on the issue while on a visit to Dharamkot, Moga, to inaugurate some projects, he said: “It is for the party high command to decide who will lead Congress in upcoming Punjab polls, who will be the CM face, but right now, Capt Amarinder is the Captain of Punjab…”

Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal, (File)

SPEAKING PUBLICLY for the first time about the infighting in Punjab Congress, state Finance Minister Manpreet Badal on Sunday said Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh is the present “Captain of Punjab”.

Asked to comment on the issue while on a visit to Dharamkot, Moga, to inaugurate some projects, he said: “It is for the party high command to decide who will lead Congress in upcoming Punjab polls, who will be the CM face, but right now, Capt Amarinder is the Captain of Punjab…”

Asked about the simmering tensions between the CM and Navjot Singh Sidhu, Manpreet told The Indian Express over phone: “It is just like misunderstandings that happen between a father and a son. It is all within the family. Both of them have age gap of at least 20 years. So many fights happen within a family. It is the same situation here too.”

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He further said, “I have no locus standi to comment on who will be the face of Congress in upcoming Punjab polls. It is for the party high command to decide. I am the finance minister of Punjab only because of the party. But yes it is a fact that currently, Capt Amarinder Singh is the Captain of Punjab.”

On Punjab’s financial health, Manpreet said that it would be the first time in 22 years that the state’s capital expenditure will be more than Haryana’s: “We will be spending Rs 14,000 crore on development works in Punjab whereas Haryana’s capital expenditure for 2021-22 is Rs 8,000 crore. Seeing the situation that Punjab was in four years ago when the Congress government had taken over, humne kishti ko ek kinaara to de diya hai… (we have managed to bring the ship to shore). We were under huge debt when we started but today our capital expenditure has exceeded that of Haryana.”

He further said that the 6th Pay Commission will be implemented from July 1 in Punjab.

Divya Goyal

Divya Goyal is a Principal Correspondent with The Indian Express, based in Punjab. Her interest lies in exploring both news and feature stories, with an effort to reflect human interest at the heart of each piece. She writes on gender issues, education, politics, Sikh diaspora, heritage, the Partition among other subjects. She has also extensively covered issues of minority communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She also explores the legacy of India's partition and distinct stories from both West and East Punjab. She is a gold medalist from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Delhi, the most revered government institute for media studies in India, from where she pursued English Journalism (Print). Her research work on “Role of micro-blogging platform Twitter in content generation in newspapers” had won accolades at IIMC. She had started her career in print journalism with Hindustan Times before switching to The Indian Express in 2012. Her investigative report in 2019 on gender disparity while treating women drug addicts in Punjab won her the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity in 2020. She won another Laadli for her ground report on the struggle of two girls who ride a boat to reach their school in the border village of Punjab. ... Read More

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