Congress’s central leadership on Friday backed Chief Minister Amarinder Singh’s leadership in the upcoming Assembly polls in Punjab with a caveat — that his detractor Navjot Singh Sidhu too would be accommodated in the party structure.

All India Congress Committee General Secretary in charge of Punjab Affairs Harish Rawat said Singh will continue as CM when the next assembly elections are fought. He, however, underlined that the party leadership is working out a formula for the rivals to work together.

“We are working out a formula where both the Chief Minister and Sidhu could work together,” Rawat told reporters here.

The said “formula” has apparently been worked out after party leaders Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi meeting with poll strategist Prashant Kishor in which Harish Rawat too was present. Rawat said while it may take some time to balance the equation in the State, the party is looking at appointing Sidhu in a prominent position while asserting that Amarinder Singh has already communicated his willingness to abide by the party high command’s decision.

While Amarinder Singh may not have particularly endeared himself to the Congress cadre and other leaders in Punjab, they are also not happy with the way the central leadership has been entertaining Sidhu, who is an outsider, having earlier been with the BJP.

“Two months back, I would have said we were home and dry in Punjab. The farmers’ protest had wiped out any anti-incumbency that the Captain (Amarinder Singh) was facing. But they (the Congress central leadership) have created a perception that Congress is a divided house. Our party has a death wish,” a senior Congress leader told BusinessLine .

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