Vinod Sharma
Factionalism within was one reason why the Congress lost in Assam and Kerala. The malaise could similarly inflict the party in Punjab where even the Captain’s worst detractors rate him as its best bet in the 2022 battle
In 2014, it took Sonia Gandhi just one phone call to make Captain Amarinder Singh agree to be the Congress candidate against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Arun Jaitley in Amritsar. Disinclined though to contest the Lok Sabha elections, he agreed without demur.
The Captain won and was appointed the party’s deputy leader in the House under Mallikarjun Kharge. He exited Parliament before the 2017 assembly polls, leading the Congress to a thumping victory in Punjab, mopping up 77 of the 117 seats in a triangular fight with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).
For some inexplicable reasons, it was only in the closing phases of the poll campaign that Rahul Gandhi, who became Congress president later that year, projected Singh as the party’s chief ministerial face at a rally in the SAD’s Amritsar stronghold of Majitha. Very much present at the stage then was Navjot Singh Sidhu.
The wheel has since moved full circle. In the changed scenario, Sidhu is seeking to anchor the opposition within and Kharge is leading a three-member in-house audit of the chief minister’s delivery record on poll-time promises. The dissidents include a clutch of ministers and members of the legislative assembly upset with the bureaucracy’s disproportionate clout. But Sidhu is most vociferous in the attacks on his 79-year-old senior he accused of being a habituated liar in an interview to this newspaper.
The cricketer-turned-politician has raised many issues of malfeasance and unkept assurances. Of greater political import is the quashing by the high court of a botched police probe into the 2015 sacrilege incidents under the previous SAD regime. A new special investigation team (SIT) constituted on the court’s diktat in May is mandated to submit its report in six months on the impiety that led to police firing on outraged protesters.
The officer who steered the first SIT, which incurred the judiciary’s wrath, joined AAP during Arvind Kejriwal’s recent visit to Amritsar, where the latter was all sugar and honey about Sidhu who had ambled up and then quickly distanced from the AAP in the lead up to the last elections. Quite clearly, the internal Congress discord and the spectacle the central leadership has made of the stock-talking exercise have afforded openings to its rivals to fish in troubled waters.
The issues on the table came to a head after the court verdict in the desecration case which was a major factor in SAD’s electoral rout and the loss of the recognised-opposition status to the AAP. Sidhu’s in-the-face accusation of the CM being in cahoots with the Akali leadership has muddied the waters at a time the Congress should be preparing for next year’s elections. His swashbuckling ways, which are an electioneering asset, haven’t helped the patch-up efforts.
Given that the differences were resolvable behind closed doors, the blame for the exacerbated crisis rests as much at the doorsteps of the central leadership. The Captain, for his part, has kept his counsel even as the inquirers and the dissidents are generous with sound bytes to TV channels. Having twice appeared before the Kharge panel, he has reasons to be displeased with the top leadership’s lack of contact with him amid a series of meetings Rahul Gandhi has held with ministers and legislators from the state.
Equally unpalatable for the elected CM are suggestions that the committee has handed him an 18-point “to do” list. The claims made in interactions with the media will be ready-made talking points for the party’s opponents in the upcoming elections.
Factionalism within was one reason why the Congress lost in Assam and Kerala. The malaise could similarly inflict the party in Punjab where even the Captain’s worst detractors rate him as its best bet in the 2022 battle. The emerging picture defies commonsense and realpolitik, more so when the CM is a phone call away from Sonia Gandhi and has passed most electoral tests post-2017, including the local body polls amid the farm agitation.
In Punjab, the Congress is clearly its own worst enemy.
The views expressed are personal
