How Punjab crisis snowballed despite enough warning signs
CHANDIGARH: Exactly six months ago, on March 18, Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh held a press conference to mark four years of his government, claiming to have fulfilled 85% of the promises listed in his party manifesto before the 2017 assembly elections.
Confident and in control, he appeared to be master of all he surveyed: a firm grip on the state legislature party with no potential challengers from within, a strong equity with a whittleddown party high command and a dispirited Opposition.
But the wheel of political fortunes turned rather swiftly for the scion of the erstwhile Patiala royalty and one of the tallest Congress leaders. On Saturday, six months after he looked unassailable, Amarinder’s chief ministership ended abruptly on a bitter note. Barely five months before the state assembly elections due early next year, in which he was hoping to again lead the party, he was forced by a cascade of circumstances to resign.
Though Amarinder tendered his resignation to the Governor half an hour before the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting, the angst of an unceremonious exit was writ all over his demeanour and in an interaction with a horde of jostling journalists, he accused, for the first time, the party high command of humiliating him. In fact, the trigger for his ouster was a hurriedly called CLP meeting that AICC general secretary and Punjab incharge Harish Rawat announced on late on Friday on his Twitter handle, bypassing Amarinder, the leader of CLP.
Signs of a gathering storm against Amarinder became evident last week when it emerged that about 40 Congress MLAs (out of the party’s strength of 80 in the 117-member House) shot off a letter to working president Sonia Gandhi, demanding the CLP meet and strongly articulating their disenchantment with the chief minister’s “failure to fulfil an 18-point to-do list that the high command had handed to him two months ago”. The letter, in the high command’s reckoning, was a strong and irrefutable expression of no confidence in Amarinder, whose political standing ostensibly suffered an erosion. That, coupled with a continuing bad blood between Amarinder and state Congress chief Navjot Sidhu, is understood to have forced the high command’s hand to jettison the Captain and effect change of guard to put its house in order before the assembly sweepstakes.
The two-time chief minister’s exit was the culmination of the tussle between him and newly appointed Punjab Congress president Sidhu that saw several cabinet ministers and MLAs turn against Amarinder. The internal wrangling continued to dog the Congress no end, despite Rawat’s efforts to bridge the Amarinder-Sidhu rift that turned more pronounced and less reconcilable.
While Amarinder was shrewd enough to checkmate the occasional rumblings of dissent, his troubles mounted after the Punjab and Haryana high court quashed the special investigation team (SIT) report in the 2015 Kotkapura police firing case that came out on April 9.
A sulking Sidhu, who had fallen out with Amarinder after his exit from the state cabinet in 2019, quickly latched on to the politically sensitive issue and blamed the CM for the setback. Several party ministers and MLAs, anxious about its political fallout on their electoral prospects, joined the Sidhu bandwagon.
The turmoil turned into a fullblown war in May, forcing the Congress central leadership to intervene. Sonia set up a threemember committee headed by Rajya Sabha MP Mallikarjun Kharge on May 29 to resolve factionalism. They met 150-odd state leaders, several of whom griped about the public perception that Captain was “hand in glove” with the Badals, and the buzz about non-fulfilment of poll promises, working style and dependence on bureaucracy. The tipping point in the Amarinder-Sidhu face-off was the cricketer-turned-politician’s equity and equation with the brother– sister duo, Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi, who apparently saw him as the next generation face of the Congress in Punjab.
On July 18, the high command named Sidhu as the state unit chief along with four working presidents, overriding the objections of the chief minister, who was bitterly opposed to his foe’s elevation and had, in a letter to the Congress president, even warned that it may lead to a split in the party. Though the party leadership was hopeful that its intervention would heal the rift, the crisis in the state Congress worsened, with both Amarinder and Sidhu pulling the party in different directions. Last month, four ministers and 24 legislators demanded that a CLP meeting be convened to remove the chief minister.
“The infighting was hurting the party. When it failed to make them work together, it had to make a choice. Since the high command had appointed Sidhu barely two months ago after much deliberation and ignoring the chief minister’s reservations, he was here to stay and Captain had to go,” a senior party leader said, asking not to be named. Also, Sidhu and other disgruntled leaders, including those who remained close to Amarinder for a long time, kept harping on the strong undercurrent of anti-incumbency against the chief minJuly ister, laying the blame on him. The embattled leader did not help his cause by not acting promptly enough on the to-do list and lost equity with the leadership.
But, Amarinder’s bitter exit may queer the pitch for the party. He dropped enough hints that he is not going to take his humiliation lying down. “I have been in politics for 52 years and remained chef minister for nineand-a-half years. I am going to be here. There are always options in politics,” he told reporters after tendering his resignation. “I will explore and exercise them at the time of my choosing.”
79-year-old Amarinder may be down, but he is certainly not out. A sulking Amarinder will keep the party on tenterhooks. He has the support of several party MLAs and MPs and may even emerge as the prime voice of dissent in the state Congress in a reversal of roles. His political manoeuvring skills, even though they did not work this time, are acknowledged by his critics. The last word on the Congress turmoil in Punjab is yet to be heard.