Summary:
Pavneet Singh ChadhaTribune News ServiceMohali, April 20In the first Cabinet expansion of the Congress government since it came to power in the state, Mohali MLA Balbir Singh Sidhu is among nine legislators who will be sworn in as a minister on Saturday. His first victory came in the 2007 Assembly poll on the Congress ticket when he defeated SAD candidate Jasjit Singh Bunny. Belonging to an agriculturist family in Tapa Mandi, Barnala district, three-time MLA Sidhu shifted to Mohali in 1981 and now has a gas agency in Kurali, a share in the family’s liquor vends and owns agricultural land. His name was finalised at a meeting between the Chief Minister, Capt Amarinder Singh, and Congress president Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi on Friday. His political career at the state level assumed significance in 1997 when he contested the Assembly elections from Kharar on the Congress ticket, losing to SAD's Bibi Daljit Kaur..