Punjab Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh said on Tuesday that it was up to Navjot Singh Sidhu, the cricketer-turned-politician, to decide whether to contest the Amritsar Lok Sabha by-election, signalling that Sidhu would soon announce his role in the party.

Sidhu’s role

In an official statement issued as he welcomed four new members into the party, two of them Shiromani Akali Dal MLAs, Amarinder said he had met Sidhu and came away with the impression that Sidhu would campaign in the assembly election due early next year. Whether he contests, he said, was Sidhu’s call. He did not say when they had met.

Quoted by news agency IANS, Amarinder said: “I hope he’ll very soon make an announcement about what he wishes to do.” He described Sidhu as being in a very positive frame of mind.

According to Amarinder, Sidhu told him that his family had backed the Congress in the past, that his father had been a district Congress president and had served as advocate general under a Congress government in the state.

Tickets and candidates

Amarinder said ticket decisions rested with party president Sonia Gandhi, but he would gladly campaign for Sidhu’s wife, Dr Navjot Kaur Sidhu, should she be given the ticket for the Amritsar East assembly segment. Candidates for all seats in the 117-member assembly would be named after December 8, the date of the next meeting of the party’s election committee.

What happened next

In the 2017 Punjab assembly election, the Congress won 77 of the 117 seats, the Aam Aadmi Party 20 and the Shiromani Akali Dal 15. Amarinder Singh became chief minister.

See also: Indian National Congress and Punjab assembly members

Originally published on 7 December 2016. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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