THE CONGRESS’ PUNJAB GAMBLE

Late in the day on Sunday, July 18, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) appointed cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu to the post of Punjab PCC (Pradesh Congress Committee) chief. This marked a watershed in the protracted tussle for supremacy between Sidhu and Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, and is being read in some quarters as the beginning of the end of the Capt. Amarinder Singh era in Punjab. With assembly polls less than a year away, some say the AICC’s decision to promote Sidhu despite the CM’s fierce protests means it is unlikely that Amarinder Singh will lead the Congress campaign to win another term in February 2022.

Before the announcement, Congress general secretary and Punjab in-charge Harish Rawat flew to Chandigarh to break the news to the chief minister. Though Amarinder Singh said he would make his peace with the AICC’s decision, he also demanded an unconditional public apology from Sidhu for badmouthing his government. Even if this apology is tendered, it is unlikely the two will be able to work together—there is too much bad blood between them. This factionalism was on full display on July 19, when Amarinder Singh and Sidhu held widely publicised meetings with supporters in a show of strength.

Political commentators also draw attention to the fact that the AICC decision was at the behest of the Gandhis, more specifically, siblings Rahul and Priyanka, both of whom support Sidhu and have directed their loyalists to back him up. This was visible in former Youth Congress chief Amrinder Singh Raja Warring driving Sidhu to various meetings in the days

before the AICC announced its decision. It also reflects in the four new working presidents elevated alongside Sidhu— Sukhwinder Singh Danny, Sangat Singh Gilzian, Kuljit Singh Nagra and Pawan Goel. While they might have been seen as counterweights to Sidhu, they are in fact all political lightweights and Gandhi loyalists. This is also the first time in almost four decades that the Gandhi family has attempted to personally direct the affairs of the party’s Punjab unit. However, sidelining Amarinder Singh is a major risk— while Sidhu has spent 17 years in politics, he has neither the chief minister’s stature nor reputation as a team player.

Sidhu’s camp has been portraying his appointment as PCC chief as a generational shift in the state’s politics. This is bad news for other senior Congress leaders in Punjab, such as Rajya Sabha MP Partap Singh Bajwa, Mohinder Singh Kaypee and Sukhjinder Randhawa, all of whom likely believed they were next in line whenever Amarinder Singh hung up his boots. For now, the Congress is trying its hand at engineering a winning caste formula for the coming elections. The state’s politics is heavily dominated by Jat Sikhs—of Punjab’s 13 MPs in the Lok Sabha, eight are Jat Sikhs, four are Dalits and one, Manish Tewari, is a Brahmin. There is a discernible political undercurrent in the state against this skew—in a letter to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, Rajya Sabha MP Shamsher Singh Dullo pointed out that the CM, the new PCC chief, the two AICC secretaries from Punjab and the chief of the state’s Youth Congress were all Jat Sikhs, arguing that the new PCC chief should have come from the Dalit community. Dullo has also made it clear that while he has no particular affection for the chief minister, he does not support Sidhu. Many other party leaders too have privately expressed their reservations about Sidhu. This has lent weight to the idea that while Amarinder Singh may be down, he is not out.

What adds to this belief is that few party MLAs have expressed support for Sidhu. For instance, while the former cricketer met with many dissenting members of the Amarinder Singh cabinet at minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa’s official residence in the state capital on July 19, he was dismayed to find that many of those ministers went on to attend the meeting held by Chief Minister Amarinder Singh at his farmhouse on the outskirts of Chandigarh.

The personality war is obviously bad news for the Congress. The party is already down to ruling just three states, and retaining Punjab in 2022 is crucial to stay relevant as a national force. This is the only state in which it managed to resist the Modi wave in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014 and 2019. Some observers believe the Congress high command may have decided to back Sidhu believing in his ability to pull crowds, his celebrity image and in the hope that his charisma will help the Congress battle anti-incumbency in the 2022 election.

Others see another reason for the change of guard—the rocky relationship between Amarinder Singh and Rahul Gandhi. In both the 2012 and 2017 assembly elections, Rahul was reportedly reluctant to back Amarinder Singh as chief minister, with Congress chief Sonia Gandhi having to intervene on both occasions. However, the chief minister’s political stature speaks for itself—in 2014, when several top Congress leaders like P. Chidambaram and Manish Tewari refused to contest the polls, Amarinder Singh defeated the BJP’s

Arun Jaitley in the battle for Amritsar with no help from the party’s national leadership. (Incidentally, Jaitley had replaced Sidhu—then a BJP member—for the polls.) Then, in the 2017 assembly election, Amarinder Singh ran and won his campaign on the tagline ‘Captain di sarkar (the Captain’s government)’.

This is not to say that the chief minister faces no political challenges—there is certainly anti-incumbency sentiment against his government. Several legislators have complained that he runs his administration like a rajshahi (kingdom), not a lokshahi (democracy). He has been criticised for depending on a small coterie of bureaucrats and advisors rather than legislators, remaining inaccessible to other political leaders. This is possibly another reason the Congress high command is betting on Sidhu—it believes he can reset the state unit and energise party workers. But the highly abrasive battle between Amarinder Singh and Sidhu has its consequences too, and in the worst-case scenario might even split the party.

There is a lot of uncertainty about what comes next, given the state’s complex political environment. Hindus are another major group in Punjab, and they are sympathetic to Amarinder Singh—his service in the Army and his focus on nationalist issues has kept them interested in the Congress. Sidhu, on the other hand, is regarded with suspicion, thanks to controversial public gestures like when he hugged Pakistan Army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa while attending Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s swearing-in ceremony, or his silence on attacks by extremists on Hindu businessmen and traders. Hindu voters dominate 45 of the state’s 117 assembly seats, making them highly significant in electoral calculations.

While confusion reigns in the Congress, the Akali Dal and the Aam Aadmi Party have an open field to gain space in rural Punjab, with the BJP also trying to make inroads. Sidhu’s appointment is a big gamble and the Congress has a lot a lose—both in the state and beyond it—if it is not able to quickly settle matters in its Punjab unit. ■

Some believe Sidhu’s elevation to PCC chief is a result of Amarinder Singh’s rocky relationship with Rahul Gandhi—in the 2012 and 2017 assembly elections in Punjab, Rahul was reportedly unwilling to back Amarinder Singh as chief minister