A day after joining Congress, India’s ex-cricketer Sidhu says its ‘homecoming’

Reuters:  India’s cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu on Monday (16 January) described his move to join the opposition Congress party as a “homecoming”.

Sidhu joined the party on Sunday (January 15) ahead of polls in the northern Punjab province.

“I am a born Congressman. I have just come back to my roots,” Sidhu told a news conference in New Delhi.

The former Indian opener had earlier quit the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in September last year.

His wife Navjot Kaur Sidhu, too, quit the BJP last year to join Congress.

Sidhu was also in talks with the Aam Aadmi (common man) Party, which is also contesting Punjab polls for the first time after its landslide victory in Delhi elections in 2015.

The 53-year-old lambasted Punjab’s ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) party, which shares power with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), for ruining the state’s economy.

“A government by the people is now a government for a family. I don’t pass comments on political parties, I believe that parties are not good or bad, it is the people who run these parties. Their thinking is good or bad. Akali Dal was also a gathering of pure people, but now it has turned into a private property,” Sidhu charged.

The Congress has been without power in the state for the last one decade and is fancying its chances as the state government has been under fire for corruption and wider use of drugs among the youth.

Punjab, along with four other states - most populous Uttar Pradesh, northern Uttarakhand, western Goa and remote northeastern Manipur - goes to polls next month.