"Patiala With Us For 400 Years": Amarinder Singh To Fight From Stronghold

Patiala has been a stronghold of Mr Singh's family.

Patiala, Punjab:

Former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has announced that he will contest the upcoming state assembly elections from the Patiala assembly constituency. "I will contest from Patiala. Patiala is with us for 400 years and I am not going to leave it due to Sidhu," Captain Singh said on his official Facebook page. Patiala has been a stronghold of Mr Singh's family, he has won the seat four times and his wife Preneet Kaur represented it for three years from 2014 to 2017. The former Chief Minister's father Maharaja Sir Yadavinder Singh was the last Maharaja of the princely state of Patiala.

Mr Singh had announced his own political party called Punjab Lok Congress earlier this month and said it'll contest all 117 assembly seats in the state.

Mr Singh had in April this year challenged state Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu to contest against him from the seat during the ongoing feud between the two that snowballed into a full-fledged crisis in the state unit of the party and led to the unceremonious exit of Mr Singh as state Chief Minister. Mr Singh had reportedly told Mr Sidhu that he would be defeated as comprehensively as the BJP's General (retd) JJ Singh, who contested the 2017 election but finished with over 60,000 votes behind Mr Singh and with just 11.1 per cent of the votes and forfeited his security deposit as a result.

CommentsMr Sidhu had hit back with a Tweet saying "Efforts to derail Punjab's conscience will fail... My soul is Punjab and Punjab's soul is Guru Granth Sahibji... Our fight is for justice and punishing the guilty... an Assembly seat is not worth (discussing) in the same breath!!".