Amarinder Singh had announced in November last year that he will contest from Patiala.(FILE)
The Congress has fielded a former mayor of Patiala - who was welcomed by Navjot Sidhu in the party recently- against Captain Amarinder Singh in the upcoming Punjab assembly election. Vishnu Sharma, a former mayor during the Congress government in 2003, rejoined the party earlier this month.
He had quit reportedly due to a fallout with former Punjab Chief Minister Singh.
Amarinder Singh had announced in November last year that he will contest from Patiala, a pocket borough of the Singh family. He has won the seat four times and his wife, Preneet Kaur, represented it for three years from 2014 to 2017. His announcement came days after he announced his own political party - Punjab Lok Congress.
Mr Singh, who recently stitched an alliance with the BJP for the Punjab election - a huge political reorientation in the state - exited the Congress after being abruptly replaced as Chief Minister in September. His feud with party's Punjab unit chief Sidhu precipitated the crisis.
Earlier in April last year, the former Chief Minister had dared Mr Sidhu to contest the elections against him from Patiala. He reportedly told Mr Sidhu that he would be defeated as comprehensively as BJP's General (retd) JJ Singh, who contested the 2017 election but finished with over 60,000 votes behind Mr Singh.
Navjot Sidhu will be fighting from Amritsar East, a seat he won comfortably in 2017 with no big face contesting against him.
Voting for Punjab's 117 Assembly seats will be held on February 20 and the counting will take place on March 10.