AAP party wants to reel in Navjot Singh Sidhu for establishing its base in Punjab

Chandigarh August 1The garrulous Jat cricketer,comedian turned politician Navjot Singh Sidhu is a gamechanger for the AAP party in Punjab.If he retains any of the popular appeal so much on display during his years as MP from Amritsar, 52-year-old Sidhu’s imminent entry into the Aam Aadmi Party – after his rather dramatic decision, on July 18, to quit his seat as a BJP nominated member of the Rajya Sabha – could well be the ultimate game-changer in Punjab.

It also adds fuel to Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s aspirations of AAP going ‘national’.

Even though Sidhu has so far been cagey about his next stop in politics, AAP leaders are displaying no such reticence.

Sanjay Singh, a senior AAP functionary from Delhi, was among the first to state that Sidhu would be part of AAP’s battle for Punjab, a fact confirmed by Manpreet Randhawa (another among a dozen Punjab journalists who have quit their jobs to sign up with AAP), who says “it’s just a matter of days before he formally joins the party”.

Mainstream political parties in poll-bound Punjab – the ruling SAD-BJP alliance with the anti-incumbency accumulated over two successive terms in office, and the Congress, which is hoping for a resurrection under the charismatic Capt Amarinder Singh – clearly believe they have much to fear from the former India opener.

Back in Amritsar, Sidhu’s chosen political home turf, where he moved to from Patiala in April 2004, and a Lok Sabha constituency he represented for 11 long years before being unceremoniously forced out in favour of Arun Jaitley in 2014,