Newsmaker | Four-time MP but always in husband’s shadow, Preneet Kaur knew her time in Congress was up

“The Congress president has received a complaint from Amarinder Raja Warring, president of PCC Punjab, that Preneet Kaur, MP (Lok Sabha) from Patiala is indulging in anti-party activities to help BJP. Some other senior Congress leaders of Punjab also share this view,” Anwar said in a statement.

Close on the heels of the Congress Disciplinary Action Committee’s showcause notice, sent on Friday, asking her to clarify within three days why she should not be expelled from the party, Kaur tweeted on Saturday, “Congress is welcome to take whatever decision it wants. I have always given my best to the party and to the people who have repeatedly elected me. I owe it to them and will continue to serve them, as always. I derive my strength from my people. Everything else is secondary.”

Congress is welcome to take whatever decision it wants.
I have always given my best to the party and to the people who have repeatedly elected me. I owe it to them and will continue to serve them, as always. I derive my strength from my people. Everything else is secondary.

— Preneet Kaur (@preneet_kaur) February 4, 2023

Friday’s showcause notice was the second issued to her, following the one issued in November 2021 for alleged “anti-party activities” and for “siding” with her husband. The second notice followed the Punjab leg of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra last month, in which Kaur was conspicuous by her absence.

A number of prominent Punjab Congress leaders are learnt to have demanded Kaur’s expulsion, citing “indiscipline” and “anti-party activities”, during an interaction with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and general secretary K C Venugopal, during the Yatra.

The November showcause was precipitated by a sequence of events that began with her husband, Captain Amarinder Singh, parting ways with the Congress, floating his own party — the Punjab Lok Congress — before the 2022 Assembly polls, and contesting in it in alliance with the BJP. After his party sank in the polls, with the Captain himself losing his seat, he merged his party with the BJP in September 2022.

Siding with her husband and family, Kaur had participated in a roadshow of Union Cabinet Minister Rajnath Singh in support of her husband in the run-up to the 2022 Punjab elections, which earned the ire of party loyalists, with Punjab Congress chief Warring saying that Kaur was not with the party anymore in May last year.

In a way, Preneet Kaur knew her time in the party was over. No wonder then that she was reaching out to ministers in the BJP-led central government of late, ostensibly to raise various administrative issues. Last Tuesday, she met Union Health Minister Dr Mansukh Mandaviya, taking along representatives of a Punjab Asha workers’ union, to put forth their demand for the restoration of their Covid-19 incentive, and to fix a minimum wage of Rs 21,000, among other things. In August last year, she had met Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, requesting him to expedite the work on an overbridge in Rajpura, one of the nine Assembly segments under the Patiala Lok Sabha constituency.

Despite getting elected four times to the Lok Sabha, Preneet Kaur had largely kept herself confined to her parliamentary segment of Patiala, never taking a plunge for any bigger role in state politics, even during the two tenures of her husband Captain Amarinder Singh as Punjab chief minister — between 2002 and 2007, and again between March 2017 and September 2021.

During her stints as MP, she kept a close connect with her electors, attending and participating in all kinds of events in Patiala. A senior Congress leader said, “In terms of accessibility, Kaur was always a picture of contrast compared to Captain Amarinder Singh.” The leader, however, added that in the last couple of years, she could not maintain that scale of connect as earlier. “This was evident during the February 2022 elections, when the Captain lost by nearly 20,000 votes in his home turf, Patiala,” he said, wishing to remain unnamed.

Having debuted on a Congress ticket from Patiala in 1999, Kaur went on to win two subsequent parliamentary polls in 2004 and 2009, completing a hat-trick, before Dharamvira Gandhi, contesting on a then-fledgling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ticket, ended her winning streak by defeating her in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Kaur staged a comeback in the 2019 Lok Sabha, avenging her 2014 defeat against Gandhi, who had by then parted ways with the AAP and was contesting on a ticket of the Nawan Punjab Party he had himself floated. As Kaur defeated her nearest rival Surjit Singh Rakhra of the SAD by a margin of over 1.62 lakh votes, she relegated Gandhi to third position.

She served as Union Minister of State, External Affairs in the UPA 2 government led by Manmohan Singh, and held the portfolio till October 2012.

She also won a Punjab Assembly bypoll from Patiala Urban in 2014, which was necessitated after the seat was vacated by her husband, Captain Amarinder Singh, when he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Amritsar.