Amarinder Singhਕੈਪਟਨ ਅਮਰਿੰਦਰ ਸਿੰਘ

Captain Amarinder Singh (born 1942) is a politician, military historian and former Indian Army officer from Patiala. A scion of the city's royal family, he twice served as Punjab's chief minister, in 2002–07 and again from 2017 until his resignation in September 2021, and has been a BJP leader since 2022.

Early life

Amarinder Singh was born on 11 March 1942 in Patiala to Maharaja Yadavindra Singh, the last ruler of the princely state of Patiala, and Maharani Mohinder Kaur. The family belongs to the Phulkian dynasty, and its home was the Qila Mubarak in Patiala, the residential palace of the Maharajas. He studied at Lawrence School, Kasauli, and the Doon School in Dehradun, where Rajiv Gandhi was a schoolmate.

After the National Defence Academy and the Indian Military Academy, he was commissioned into the Sikh Regiment in 1963. He served as aide-de-camp to Lt Gen Harbaksh Singh and was on duty in the 1965 war with Pakistan before leaving the army in 1966. The Indian Express notes that those three years shaped his politics.

Career

Persuaded by Rajiv Gandhi to join the Congress, he lost his first Lok Sabha contest from Patiala in 1977 to the Akali leader Gurcharan Singh Tohra and won the seat in 1980. In 1984, after Operation Blue Star, he quit the Congress and joined the Shiromani Akali Dal, winning the Talwandi Sabo assembly seat and serving as a minister. In 1986 he and Parkash Singh Badal led a 27-MLA split in the Akali Dal. He floated his own Shiromani Akali Dal (Panthic) in 1992, and merged it back into the Congress in 1998, after polling just 856 votes in his own constituency.

He headed the Punjab Congress three times and became chief minister in 2002. In that term his government legislated Punjab out of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal agreement, and he hosted Pakistan Punjab's chief minister, saying he wanted to have breakfast in Amritsar and lunch in Lahore. In 2014 he beat Arun Jaitley in Amritsar by 102,770 votes.

In 2017 he led the Congress to a more than two-thirds majority and was sworn in on 16 March. India Today noted that he remains the only Congress chief minister to win two Punjab assembly elections since 1966. Critics said he was inaccessible, ruling from a farmhouse near Chandigarh, and was soft on the Badals over the Bargari sacrilege case. After months of a feud with Navjot Singh Sidhu, he resigned on 18 September 2021, saying he felt humiliated; he was the first Punjab chief minister in 24 years not to complete a term.

He founded the Punjab Lok Congress in November 2021, which failed to win a seat in 2022, when he also lost Patiala to Ajit Pal Singh Kohli of the Aam Aadmi Party. On 19 September 2022 he merged his party with the BJP. He is now a BJP national executive member.

Writing and personal life

Amarinder has written seven books on military history, including A Ridge Too Far, Lest We Forget, The Last Sunset: Rise and Fall of the Lahore Durbar and The Monsoon War. Khushwant Singh wrote his authorised biography, Captain Amarinder Singh: The People's Maharaja (2017). The Indian Express also calls him a chef and an avid gardener.

His wife, Preneet Kaur, was an MP and Minister of State for External Affairs from 2009 to 2012. Their son Raninder Singh and daughter Jai Inder Kaur are both in politics. In February 2026 the Enforcement Directorate summoned him and Raninder in a 2016 foreign-exchange case, the Tribune reported.

Where is Amarinder Singh from?

He was born in Patiala on 11 March 1942 into the city's royal family. His father, Yadavindra Singh, was the last Maharaja of Patiala.

How many times was Amarinder Singh chief minister of Punjab?

Twice: from 2002 to 2007, and from 16 March 2017 until he resigned on 18 September 2021.

Which party is Amarinder Singh in now?

The Bharatiya Janata Party. He left the Congress in 2021, founded the Punjab Lok Congress, and merged it with the BJP on 19 September 2022.