Guwahati News Desk: Under fire for his controversial comments on Kashmir, Malvinder Singh Mali resigned from his post as the adviser to Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu on Friday.
The announcement was made by Mali through a statement posted on his Facebook page saying, “I humbly submit that I withdraw my consent given for tendering suggestions to Navjot Singh Sidhu”.
However, Mali did not term it as a “resignation”, for which he went ahead to share a separate Facebook post claiming that the question of his resignation does not arise as he never accepted the post.
His second post read, “Neither accepted any post, nor resigned from any post.”
Amidst the on going power tussle in Punjab, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had asked Sidhu on Sunday to “rein in” his advisers after two of them made “atrocious” comments recently on sensitive issues like Kashmir and Pakistan.
AICC general secretary Harish Rawat, who is in charge of Punjab affairs, had also said that the two advisers needed to go.
Moreover, it was on August 11 when Mali, a former government teacher and political analyst and Pyare Lal Garg, a former registrar of Baba Farid University of Health and Sciences, were appointed by Sidhu as his advisers to seek their “wise counsel”.
Regarding Mali’s controversial comment, it was done through a recent social media post where he had waded into the issue of revocation of Article 370 of the Constitution, which gave special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. In the post he had reportedly said if Kashmir was a part of India, then what was the need to have Articles 370 and 35A. He had also said, “Kashmir is a country of Kashmiri people.”
Regarding Garg’s controversial comment, he had reportedly questioned the chief minister’s criticism of Pakistan.
Thus, the Chief Minister went ahead and warned against such “atrocious and ill-conceived comments that were potentially dangerous to the peace and stability of the state and the country”.