Captain Amarinder Singh, who resigned as the Punjab chief minister on Saturday, said that party’s state chief Navjot Singh Sidhu is a “security threat” for Punjab and India due to his connections with Pakistan PM Imran Khan and the country’s Army chief General Bajwa. The tussle between former Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh and party’s state chief Navjot Singh Sidhu received some fresh steam on Saturday after the latter, only hours after resigning from the top post, said that he will fight “tooth and nail” to stop any move of making Sidhu the new chief minister of the state. Calling Sidhu an “anti-national…unstable, incompetent man,” the Captain further said that the former is a “security threat” for both Punjab and India. “I cannot allow such a man to destroy us, I will continue to fight the issues that are bad for this state and its people,” the outgoing chief minister said.

Notably, the feud between Singh and Sidhu heads back to 2019 when the latter resigned from the former-led state cabinet after months of infighting inside the system. The Captain was fiercely against Sidhu’s controversial step of hugging Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and also attending the swearing-in ceremony of the country’s Prime Minister Imran Khan. The matter reached such a stage that it required the attention of Congress president Sonia Gandhi for which she even formed a committee – led by the former Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge. Following discussions, an overhaul occurred in July this year that saw Sidhu becoming the party’s state chief while the Captain continuing in the top post as the chief minister.

The solution hardly made any difference as in August two of Sidhu’s advisors – Malvinder S Mali and Pyare Lal Garg, came under fire and received open backlash from the outgoing chief minister of Punjab for their comments on Kashmir and Pakistan, respectively.