Captain Amarinder Singh bats for Rahul as PM face for joint opposition alliance in 2019 polls

Chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Sunday backed Rahul Gandhi as the prime ministerial candidate of a joint opposition alliance in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Reiterating his earlier stand, Amarinder said that Rahul was fully competent to lead the country and will surely prove to be a successful PM. “The Congress should explore all alliance possibilities for next year’s parliamentary elections and Rahul should lead the joint front of the opposition parties to boot the divisive BJP-led NDA out of power,” said Amarinder.

Speaking to the media on the sidelines of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) session in New Delhi, Amarinder said alliances for the Lok Sabha polls would be worked out by the party at the national level, with the state units following suit.

“The alignments will have to happen at the national level. Whatever they decide will apply to the states,” he said, adding that “the alliances will be dependent on the central leadership, and wherever it takes us, we will go”.

Amarinder said he supported former finance minister P Chidambaram, who told the CWC that the Congress would have to enter broad-based alliances to win the 2019 elections. “I endorse what Mr Chidambaram has said. I think he said a very good thing that we should bring in as many people in the opposition together as possible,” he added.

All the like-minded parties who want to restore India’s glorious secular and harmonious character should get together in their collective interest, and more importantly in the interest of the country, Amarinder said.

To a question on the people’s mood in Punjab ahead of the LS polls, the CM said it was entirely in favour of the Congress. Pointing out that the Congress had won Gurdaspur and Shahkot bypolls with record margins in recent months, he expressed the confidence that the party would win hands down in the parliamentary elections next year.

The CM, in response to a question, said there was no harm in bringing the new vice-chancellor of Panjab University in Chandigarh from the Banaras Hindu University. Top academicians can be from any state and there is nothing wrong in appointing them to universities in the other states, he added, when asked about the appointment of Prof Raj Kumar, dean and head of institute of management studies, BHU, as Panjab University V-C.