New Delhi: Former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday claimed he had got a message from Pakistan to reinstate Navjot Singh Sidhu in his government because he was an old friend of their prime minister.
Asked about the allegation at a press conference, Sidhu dubbed Singh as a "spent cartridge" and refused to comment further on the matter.
Singh, who has floated a new party after leaving the Congress and is fighting next month's Punjab assembly polls in an alliance with the BJP, said he was told that Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan would be grateful if he could keep Sidhu in the government.
Singh, who had dropped Sidhu from the Punjab government during his tenure as chief minister, never had smooth relations with the cricketer-turned-politician and was against his appointment as the Punjab unit chief of the Congress.
"I removed Mr Sidhu from the job, the man was totally incompetent, incapable and totally useless. In seventy days he didn't complete a file. I told him I don't want you in my government."
"Then several weeks later I got a message from somebody we both know, he knows and also I know. I got a message from Pakistan that the prime minister (Imran Khan) has sent a request that if you can take Sidhu in your cabinet, he will be grateful. Sidhu is an old friend of his. And if he doesn't work you can remove him," Singh said during a press conference at the BJP headquarters here to announce a seat-sharing arrangement.
The former chief minister, however, did not specify who gave him the message.
Singh also suggested that he has stayed in contact with old political families of Pakistan and said during his earlier tenure as chief minister of Punjab, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh "asked me to make contact and see if there can be some friendship between Pravez Elahi and us."
Elahi was the chief minister of Pakistan's Punjab province during 2002-07. In the press conference, Singh also expressed concern about a large amount of weaponry coming from across the border to disturb the hard-earned peace of Punjab.
On Sunday, he had alleged in Chandigarh that Sidhu has "no brains" and also claimed that he had advised Congress president Sonia Gandhi five years ago not to induct "this incompetent man" into the party.
Sidhu and Singh had been at loggerheads and never had cordial relations from the very beginning the Congress formed government in Punjab in 2017. Sidhu was dropped from the cabinet of the Singh-led government in the state, but appointed as the Congress state unit chief, against the wishes of Singh.
Later, Singh resigned as chief minister of the state and move out of the Congress by floating his own political outfit Punjab Lok Congress and forged an alliance with Punjab.
At the press conference of Sidhu in Chandigarh, Congress leader Alka Lamba fielded a volley of questions on Singh's allegation and said the answer to it will be given in the next press meet.
