Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu, who has been at loggerheads with Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh and was stripped of key portfolios in a cabinet shuffle in June, has announced his resignation from the state ministry.

The 55-year-old former cricketer made his resignation letter, addressed to Rahul Gandhi four days after his portfolio was changed last month, public on Twitter on Sunday.

In a later tweet, Sidhu said he would be sending the letter to the chief minister.

Dated June 10, the letter says: “I hereby resign as minister from the Punjab cabinet.”

On June 9, three days after the shuffle, Sidhu had met Rahul in New Delhi and handed over a letter to him.

In the June 6 shuffle, Amarinder had divested Sidhu of the local government department and the tourism and cultural affairs ministry, allotting him the power and new and renewable energy portfolio.

In an apparent snub to Sidhu, the Congress MLA from Amritsar East was also left out of the consultative groups that Amarinder formed on June 8 to speed up the implementation of the state government’s flagship programmes.

More than a month after his portfolios were changed, Sidhu had yet not taken charge of his new assignment, allowing the standoff with the chief minister to continue.

That Sidhu has waited more than a month before making his resignation letter public suggests he may have been waiting for reconciliation.

Amarinder had met Congress veteran Ahmed Patel, assigned to play peacemaker, during a Delhi visit last month but party sources described the meeting as a “courtesy call”.

Since the portfolio shuffle, Sidhu and his wife Navjot Kaur have been keeping the media at a distance.

After the June 9 meeting with Rahul, Sidhu had on June 10 shared a picture with the outgoing Congress president, party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi and Patel on his Twitter handle and Facebook page. Since then, he has not shared anything on Twitter or Facebook.

Sidhu, a former BJP politician who had joined the Congress just ahead of the 2017 Punjab Assembly polls, has been fighting with Amarinder for sometime.

The tensions burst out in the open last month when Amarinder blamed Sidhu for the “inept handling” of the local government department, claiming it had led to the Congress’s “poor performance” from urban areas in the Lok Sabha polls.

Amarinder said the urban vote bank had been the Congress’s backbone in Punjab but Sidhu’s “failure” to carry out any development project had affected the party’s fortunes.

Sidhu shot back that his department was being “singled out publicly” while asserting he could not be taken for granted as he had been a “performer throughout”.

Amarinder had earlier taken umbrage at Sidhu’s “friendly match” jibe during electioneering in Bathinda on May 17. Sidhu had allegedly cornered the state’s Congress government on the issue of the desecration of religious texts, asking why no FIR had been lodged against the Badals --- the Akali Dal leaders who ran the previous government.

This evoked a sharp reaction from Amarinder, who said: “If he were a real Congressman, he should have chosen a better time to air his grievances instead of (doing so) just ahead of voting in Punjab.”

Amarinder had added: “He is harming the party with such irresponsible actions. It is not his election but that of the entire Congress. Perhaps he is ambitious and wants to be the chief minister.”

Last year, Sidhu had said in Hyderabad: “Rahul Gandhi is my captain; Rahul Gandhi is the captain of the Captain (Amarinder) also.”

Amarinder is often referred to as “Captain” because of his army past. The chief minister had earlier disapproved of Sidhu hugging the Pakistani army chief during a visit to the neighbouring country.