Captain Amarinder Singh to join BJP 

Former Punjab Chief Minister and Congress leader Captain Amarinder Singh is set to join BJP in the next week. Singh has also decided to merge his party, the Punjab Lok Congress (PLC) with the BJP. 

The former Congress leader had met with the Union Home Minister Amit Shah last week to discuss the details of the same. 

Amarinder Singh, who was also the former Chief Minister of Punjab, had resigned from the party following his dishonourable replacement by Charan Singh Channi after his protracted fight with Navjot Singh Siddhu, the leader of the Congress in the state. 

After quitting Congress, Amarinder floated the PLC (Punjab Lok Congress) in the run-up to the February 20 Punjab Assembly elections. It contested the polls in an alliance with the BJP and the SAD (Sanyukt).

According to their seat-sharing arrangement, the BJP contested 65 seats, the PLC on 37 (with several candidates preferring to contest on the BJP symbol) and the SAD (Sanyukt) on 15 seats.

However, the alliance lost badly as the PLC could not win a single seat, with Capt Amarinder Singh losing Patiala, his bastion. The BJP managed to win two seats, while the SAD (Samyukt) also failed to draw poll numbers. 

The Congress in recent times has seen the loss of many staunch leaders, with the recent exit of such names like Kapil Sibbal, Ghulam Nabi Azad and even Capt Amarinder Singh.

Most of this is attributed to the party’s resistance to reform of any kind that would shift power away from the Nehru-Gandhi family to other leaders in Congress. A very recent example of this was also seen in Goa where 8 MLAs defected from Congress to the BJP.