Amarinder Singh

Captain Amarinder Singh (born 11 March 1942), is an Indian politician, military historian, former royal and Indian Army veteran who served as the 15th Chief Minister of Punjab.

A former Member of the Legislative Assembly, Punjab and Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha, he was also the president of Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee.

Singh was born on 11 March 1942 in Patiala City, Patiala State, Punjab Province, British India into a royal Punjabi Jat Sikh family of the Sidhu clan to parents Maharaja Sir Yadavindra Singh and Maharani Mohinder Kaur of Patiala.

Amarinder Singh's family belongs to the Phulkian dynasty.

He attended the Loreto Convent in Shimla, and Lawrence School in Kasauli, Solan District, before going to The Doon School in Dehradun.

He has one son, Raninder Singh, and one daughter, Jai Inder Kaur.

He has also served in the Indian Army from 1963 to 1966.

Singh served in the Indian Army from June 1963 to December 1966 after graduating from the National Defence Academy and the Indian Military Academy.

He was commissioned into the Sikh Regiment.

He served as the aide-de-camp to the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief Western Command, Lieutenant General Harbaksh Singh, from December 1964.

He left the army in early 1965 to look after his family but returned to service with the start of the 1965 Indo-Pakistan War.

His father and grandfather were also in army and many times he said that "Army will always be my first love".

In 1980, he won a seat in the Lok Sabha for the first time.

As of November 2022, Singh also serves as the chairman of the Punjab Urdu Academy.

Captain Singh resigned as the Chief Minister of Punjab on 18 September 2021.

On 19 September 2022 he merged his party PLC with BJP and joined BJP on the same day.

He was inducted into the Congress by Rajiv Gandhi, who was his friend from school and was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1980.

In 1984, he resigned from Parliament and from Congress as a protest against the Army action during Operation Blue Star.

Subsequently, he joined the Shiromani Akali Dal was elected to the state legislature from Talwandi Sabo and became a minister in the state government for Agriculture, Forest, Development and Panchayats.

In 1992 he broke away from the Akali Dal and formed a splinter group named Shiromani Akali Dal (Panthic) which later merged with the Congress in 1998 (after his party's crushing defeat in Vidhan Sabha election in which he himself was defeated from his own constituency where he got only 856 votes) after Sonia Gandhi took over the reins of the party.

He was defeated by Prof Prem Singh Chandumajra from Patiala Constituency in 1998 by a margin of 33,251 votes.

He served as the President of Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee on three occasions from 1999 to 2002, 2010 to 2013 and 2015 to 2017.

He has been a member of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha for five terms representing Patiala (Urban) thrice, Samana and Talwandi Sabo once each.

He has also previously served as the Chief Minister of Punjab from 2002 to 2007 and 2017 to 2021.

His father was the last Maharaja of the princely state of Patiala.

He became Chief Minister of Punjab in 2002 and continued until 2007.

In September 2008, a special committee of Punjab Vidhan Sabha, during the tenure of a government led by Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party, expelled him on the count of regularities in the transfer of land related to the Amritsar Improvement Trust.

He was appointed as chairman of Punjab Congress Campaign Committee in 2008.

His wife, Preneet Kaur, served as an Member of Parliament and was Minister of State in the Ministry of External Affairs from 2009 to October 2012.

His elder sister Heminder Kaur is married to former Foreign Minister K. Natwar Singh.

He is also related to Shiromani Akali Dal (A) supremo and former IPS Officer Simranjit Singh Mann.

Mann's wife and Amarinder Singh's wife, Preneet Kaur, are sisters.

In 2010, the Supreme Court of India held his expulsion unconstitutional on the grounds that it was excessive and unconstitutional.

Captain Amarinder Singh is also a Permanent Invitee to the Congress Working Committee since 2013.

He was appointed president of the Jat Mahasabha in 2013.

He defeated senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley by a margin of 102,770 votes in 2014 general elections from Amritsar seat.

On 27 November 2015, Amarinder Singh was appointed President of Punjab Congress in the run up to Punjab elections slated for 2017.

On 11 March 2017 Congress Party won the 2017 Punjab Legislative Assembly election under his leadership.

Amarinder Singh was sworn in as the 26th Chief Minister of Punjab on 16 March 2017 at Punjab Raj Bhavan, Chandigarh.

The oath of office was administered by the Punjab governor, V.P. Singh Badnore.