INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
mounting an attack on Punjab Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu in connection with a 30-year-old road rage case, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh
today refuted speculation that the Congress leader would be resigning from the state cabinet.The chief minister said there was no question
of asking Navjot Singh Sidhu, the Tourism, Culture and Local Government minister, to quit.Last week, the state government in the Supreme
Court had favoured the Punjab and Haryana High Court verdict convicting and awarding a three-year jail term to Mr Sidhu in the 1988
his petition challenging the high court order.Mr Sidhu had allegedly hit a 65-year-old man, Gurnam Singh, on the head during an argument on
a road in Patiala on December 27, 1988
Gurnam Singh died of a haemorrhage in the hospital.The question of the minister resigning, merely because the state government had repeated
its stand of 30-years in the case before the Supreme Court, did not arise, he added."There was neither any impediment in Sidhu's induction
into the cabinet nor in his continuation now, in view of the stay on his conviction", Mr Amarinder said in a statement here.The categorical
clarification from the chief minister came amid reports suggesting that Mr Sidhu had been asked to resign, and also in the wake of the
demand from the opposition that he should step down.However, the chief minister once again expressed the hope "that the judge would take
had deliberately not supported the minister in the Supreme Court, the chief minister stressed that unless the prosecution received new
inputs, it was not legally possible for it to add a new element to its arguments."Taking a U-turn from the stand taken by the government in
the trial and high courts was not an option for the government," he added.In September 1999, a trial court had acquitted Mr Sidhu of the
However, the High Court reversed the verdict and held him and co-accused Rupinder Singh Sandhu guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to
murder in December, 2006.The high court sentenced them to three-year imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh each on the convicts.After
the Punjab government favoured a court verdict convicting Mr Sidhu in the road rage case, the minister had tried to put on a brave face,
saying he was ready to carry "any burden" that he may have to because of his own government's stance, even as Opposition demanded he quit
