Amarinder Singh announces his new party 'Punjab Lok Congress' for 2022 state elections

After officially resigning from the Congress in a scorching 7-page letter to Sonia Gandhi, former Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Tuesday announced his new political party 'Punjab Lok Congress', which is awaiting approval for name and logo from the Election Commission. It is this party with which Captain Amarinder intends to contest the 2022 Punjab Elections, for which he has sought a seat-share alliance with the BJP. 

The Election Commission has no objection to the proposed name, Punjab Lok Congress, he said. About the party symbol, Capt Amarinder said, the Election Commission had given three symbols from which one was to be chosen. He said his party has also submitted three different symbols and the final symbol will be chosen from the set of six symbols, three suggested by the Election Commission and three proposed by the party.

The party will be formally launched later. The policies, programmes, agenda and vision will be spelt out at the time of the launch of the party, Captain Amarinder added.

Captain Amarinder Singh resigns from the Congress party

Also on Tuesday, in a letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Captain Amarinder wrote, "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 Singh who had publicly hugged the Pakistan Army chief Gen Bajwa and Prime Minister Imran Khan, as the president of Punjab Congress Committee. Khan and Bajwa are the people responsible for sending terrorists across the border to kill Indians. It may be noted that 82 of Punjabi soldiers have been martyred in Jammu and Kashmir since my government took over in 2017."

He added, "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 did not stop him from using the filthiest and most vile language against me both publicly and privately."

Speaking about his achievements as a Congress member, he also said, "I led the party to win 8 of the 13 Lok Sabha seats, against a nationwide sweeping BJP wave. We won all the corporations and municipal elections besides, two-thirds of the panchayat elections. We also won four of the five bye-elections to the Punjab Vidhan Sabha."

"For 4 years and six months I ran a good, clean and transparent administration. The achievements are far numerous to even enumerate. Punjab's handling of the COVID -19 Pandemic was among the best in the country. All this was achieved despite a severe resource crunch and continuous cross border ingress of weapons and narcotics from Pakistan," he added. 

As far as Captain's new political journey is concerned, he has stated he's looking forward to forging an alliance with the BJP for the upcoming polls and has decided to contest on all 117 seats. Apart from the BJP, Singh also informed that he will hold talks with the Akali Dal and has vowed to form a united front to defeat the Congress party in Punjab, and fight Sidhu from wherever he contests.

Captain Amarinder's Resignation by Republic World on Scribd