chandigarh:
Amarinder Singh, who left Congress last year, is likely to join the BJP soon, sources said today.
The 89-year-old former Chief Minister is in London for back surgery. He is likely to merge his Punjab Lok Congress party with the BJP after his return next week.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Amarinder Singh on Sunday after his surgery.
Amarinder Singh, or “captain”, left Congress, his party of five decades, after being replaced as prime minister last year.
Singh said in a letter to party leader Sonia Gandhi that he had been humiliated three times by the leadership and could not take it anymore. The 89-year-old also warned that he still had politics in him and that he had no intention of walking into the sunset.
The three-time Chief Minister had then denied joining the BJP – a course followed by many disgruntled congressional leaders in recent years – and founded his own party. He took part in the April-May Punjab elections in alliance with the BJP.
The captain lost to the Patiala chair and even lost his deposit.
Since the election, other high-ranking congressional leaders have left the party and joined the BJP in Punjab; former head of the Punjab Congress, Sunil Jakhar, is one of them. But Amarinder Singh’s wife, Preneet Kaur, remains a Member of Parliament from Patiala.
Preneet Kaur, a former Union minister, has reportedly urged the BJP to remove her daughter Jai Inder Kaur from her Lok Sabha seat.