JOIN USNo signs of a thaw in Punjab Congress
The formula devised to kick-start the Congress campaign for the 2022 Assembly elections in Punjab has been made public. Navjot Singh Sidhu is now the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president, and Amarinder Singh remains the chief minister.
Political strategist Prashant Kishor's political consultancy firm, the Indian Political Action Committee (IPAC), has been surveying Punjab for over a month. Its feedback to the Gandhis, the first family of the Congress, that the public exhibition of the infighting in the Punjab Congress could spell doom for the party is what prompted the high command to take a quick decision, which went in favour of Sidhu.
Alongside Sidhu's appointment, the party also appointed four new working presidents, none of whom are seen as Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh's men. However, missing from the compromise formula was a public apology that Amarinder Singh had sought from Sidhu. Amarinder Singh had said he would not meet Sidhu till the latter issues a public apology. The apology hasn't come.
Instead, Sidhu has started reducing the compromise formula to an apology. Hours after being made the party's state unit chief, he tweeted: "My father, a Congress worker left a royal household and joined the freedom struggle, was sentenced to death for his patriotic work…." The tweet was a jibe at Amarinder Singh's royal descent.
Both Navjot Singh Sidhu and Amarinder Singh hail from the same Sidhu clan of the Sikhs. However, their shared lineage does not seem to have helped the two reach a thaw. The Congress high command's 18-point agenda proclaimed as the key to winning the 2022 elections is nowhere in focus.
So what is likely to happen in battleground Punjab in 2022? Kishore has told the Gandhis that a united Congress stands the best chance to win the 2022 polls among the three major political forces in the state, the other two being the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
But the unity was nowhere to be seen a day after Sidhu's elevation on Monday. The Congress legislators gathered at two spots. About forty were at minister Tript Rajinder Bajwa's house in Chandigarh to welcome Sidhu, the new state unit chief. Former Congress state unit chief Sunil Jakhar was there too. The rest of the remaining 35 Congress MLAs, including some ministers, were in a different huddle with Amarinder Singh. It told the world who is with whom in the Punjab Congress.
With the leadership tussle seemingly settled, the Congress would now need to get to work to implement the 18-point unfulfilled agenda. The difficulty with that is the Amarinder Singh government couldn't implement it in four years and is now expected to execute it before the elections code of conduct comes into place in about six months.
Before Sidhu lashed out at the chief minister, accusing him of being soft on the Badals on the issue of sacrilege, Congress had seemed ahead in the game. Just then, the SAD began announcing its candidates. It has declared six candidates who have started campaigning for the upcoming polls. The AAP hasn't announced candidates yet. But Arvind Kejriwal's promise of up to 300 units of free power has meant the AAP has set the tone for an aggressive campaign.
Moreover, the SAD's alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), leaving the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to contest the elections alone for the first time in decades, brings a fresh set of challenges for all the parties to understand how the new political equation pans out in the state. There is a sense among keen watchers of Punjab affairs that despite their truck with the BSP, the Akalis aren't sure about the outcome of this new alliance. If it works, it will be a lottery. Else there is nothing they can fall back on.
Owing to the SAD and BJP's political divorce, a section of the core Hindu votes, which till the 2017 elections went the SAD-BJP's way, could support the Congress. The Akalis could lose this support now that they have severed ties with the BJP. It could help the Congress party more than the AAP since it is almost a leaderless party in Punjab.
But the Congress needs to show a united face, quickly pick up the pieces, focus on implementing the 18-point agenda, draft a good manifesto and announce candidates acceptable to both the camps.
The strong orator that Sidhu is, the election strategy of Kishore, and the experience of Amarinder Singh together should be enough to defeat the opposition. But it can only happen if the two warring Sidhus - Navjot Singh Sidhu and Amarinder Singh - fight unitedly. The voters of Punjab are eagerly looking forward to it.
(The writer is a Chandigarh-based journalist.)