Punjab Cong leaders upset with strategist Prashant Kishor’s team

Punjab Congress leaders are up in arms against poll strategist Prashant Kishor’s team for conducting the campaign programmes of state unit chief Captain Amarinder Singh “in an arbitrary manner”.

Congress sources said some functionaries complained to the leadership about the “style of functioning” of members of Indian Political Action Committee (IPAC), an organisation headed by Kishor. The leaders cited an incident during a ‘Halqe Vich Captain’ (Captain in constituency) programme at Kartarpur in Jalandhar on July 24.

The Punjab Congress chief aims to reach out to the voters of all the 117 assembly constituencies across Punjab through this programme.

Sources said Lok Sabha MP from Jalandhar Santokh Singh Chaudhary expressed resentment and left the venue after he was not allowed to share the stage with Amarinder.

The programme is devised in such way that only Captain sits on the dais for the grievance-hearing session with the voters of an assembly segment.

An enraged Chaudhary, a prominent Dalit leader from Doaba region, returned after Amarinder persuaded him.

Chaudhary later sat next to Amarinder on the stage throughout the programme.

“The programme was held in Chaudhary’s constituency. The crowd was managed entirely by him. And then he was asked by the IPAC team to sit in the audience,” said a Congress functionary close to the Jalandhar MP.

On Wednesday, senior leader Rana Kanwar Pal Singh — popularly known as Rana Kaypee — refused to sit among the mediapersons when asked by Kishor’s team to leave Amarinder alone on the dais during a press conference in Nangal.