The post, along with a short video of a motivational talk he delivered, read, “Taking a plunge, my first motivational talk after ten years.”

Punjab Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu, who stayed away from campaigning in the recent Lok Sabha elections, has now returned as a motivational speaker.

Written by Navjeevan Gopal

Chandigarh | Updated: June 12, 2024 01:32 PM IST

4 min read

Sidhu, Motivational speaker, T20, Congress

Sidhu, who was thrice elected as a Lok Sabha MP from Amritsar on a BJP ticket, joined the Congress in January 2017, ahead of Punjab Vidhan Sabha elections that year. (File photo)

“ Insaan apna muqadar khud banata hai sahab. Aur baad mein usey honi ka naam de deta hai (A man makes his own destiny, and then later terms it fate),” Navjot Singh Sidhu said at a Goa resort on May 31 as the cricketer-turned-politician and Congress leader returned as a motivational speaker after a gap of a decade.

Sidhu, who is currently in the United States to give commentary and expert analysis in the ongoing T20 World Cup cricket tournament, had put out a post on X before leaving India, saying that he was resuming motivational talks. The post, along with a short video of a motivational talk he delivered, read, “Taking a plunge, my first motivational talk after ten years.”

Though the Congress had included Sidhu in its list of star campaigners for the Lok Sabha elections in Punjab on June 1, the former state party chief and four-time Member of Parliament – thrice in the Lok Sabha and once in the Rajya Sabha – stayed away from campaigning. Instead, he chose to return to cricket commentary after around a decade in the IPL T20 that concluded last month.

A united show by an otherwise faction-ridden Punjab Congress saw it emerge as the leading party in the state, winning seven out of 13 Lok Sabha seats.

Sidhu, who was thrice elected as a Lok Sabha MP from Amritsar on a BJP ticket, joined the Congress in January 2017, ahead of Punjab Vidhan Sabha elections that year. He contested on a Congress ticket in the 2017 Punjab elections and won from Amritsar East, the constituency his wife Navjot Kaur Sidhu was elected from on a BJP ticket in 2012.

Also Read | With leads in 14 SC Assembly segments, Cong strongest; AAP with 9 biggest gainer

Sidhu has had very cordial ties with Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi. He was inducted in the council of ministers led by then Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh and held portfolios of tourism and cultural affairs and local government. In 2019, he was at loggerheads with Amarinder and resigned from the cabinet after he was divested of the key portfolios and was given power and new and renewable energy during a Cabinet reshuffle in June that year. Sidhu did not assume charge of the new portfolios and resigned, retreating into political oblivion, before resurfacing and launching a YouTube channel ‘Jittega Punjab’ in March 2020 and announcing a “dharam yudh (a righteous war)” to get the state back on track.

In July 2021, Sidhu was appointed Punjab Congress president and was one of the chief ministerial aspirants when the Congress asked Amarinder to step down following widespread resentment within the party over his functioning. Eventually, the Congress chose the party’s Dalit face Charanjit Singh Channi to replace Amarinder as CM and also declared Channi as its CM face in the 2022 Punjab elections.

After the poll debacle in 2022 where the Congress could win only 18 seats in the 117-member Punjab Vidhan Sabha – a massive slide from the 77 seats it had won in the 2017 elections – Sidhu, who lost from Amritsar East, was replaced with Amrinder Singh Raja Warring as Punjab Congress chief in April 2022.

Story continues below this ad

While Warring and Congress MLA from Qadian Partap Singh Bajwa, who was appointed leader of the Opposition, worked in tandem, exhibiting unity, Sidhu emerged to hold parallel shows of strength after he came out of jail after one-year imprisonment in April last year in a road rage case dating back to 1988.

In March this year, nearly two months ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in Punjab, Sidhu had returned to cricket commentary.