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Sidelined in Congress, Manpreet Badal looks for greener pastures in BJP
The exit of former finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal, who quit the Congress and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday, could not have come at a more inopportune moment for the party.
Chandigarh
The exit of former finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal, who quit the Congress and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday, could not have come at a more inopportune moment for the party.
The resignation came just a day before former Congress president Rahul Gandhi is to wind up the Punjab leg of the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ with a rally in Pathankot on Thursday. The state leaders of the faction-ridden Punjab Congress had got together and worked assiduously to put up a united face for the eight-day march to try and resurrect the party ahead of next year’s parliamentary polls, but the former minister’s sudden departure has put the focus back on the existing faultlines in the state unit.
Factionalism blamed for exit
Manpreet, in a two-page resignation letter addressed to Rahul Gandhi and posted on Twitter minutes before joining the BJP, did not mince words in blaming factionalism for his irrevocable disaffection and exit from the party. “The coterie of men entrusted with the authority to dictate Delhi’s writ to the Punjab unit of the Congress are far from sound. Instead of striving to reduce internal disagreement in an already divided house, these men acted to further increase factionalism, and almost as a matter of policy strengthened the very worst elements within the party,” he wrote.
At a press conference held by the BJP in Delhi for his joining, the former minister again called the Congress a party at war with itself and having at least four to five factions.
Animus with Warring ran deep
Manpreet, the architect of the Congress manifesto for the 2017 polls swept by the party with a near two-thirds majority, had been feeling sidelined and excluded from decision-making since his defeat in the assembly elections last year, according to party leaders.
To make matters worse, his arch-rival Amarinder Singh Raja Warring was made president of the state Congress. Manpreet and Warring have been at loggerheads from the time they faced each other as candidates of the People’s Party of Punjab (PPP) and Congress, respectively, in Gidderbaha in the 2012 assembly elections, and the latter won the contest.
Animus between the two has been so deep since that Warring gave a call two days before the polling for the assembly elections last year to the voters to defeat “all the Badals”, including Manpreet who was his cabinet colleague at that time.
As the PPCC chief also, Warring did not let go of any opportunity to take swipes at him. Last month, he targeted the former finance minister and his close aides, riled over the appointment of the president of the Bathinda Urban unit of the state Congress, for staying away from a party event held in Bathinda.
Manpreet was also not seen at any of the meetings held by the state Congress to make preparations for the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’, triggering speculation about his political future in the party.
Ashutosh Kumar, professor of political science at Panjab University, Chandigarh, said that with Manpreet not being on good terms with Warring who also comes from south Malwa, and his benefactor former CM Capt Amarinder Singh also out of the Congress, he probably did not see any future for himself and was left with no option except quitting the party.
Warring lost no time in dubbing the former minister’s resignation as “good riddance”, terming him as “congenitally power hungry”.
Manpreet, the nephew of Akali stalwart and former CM Parkash Singh Badal, had made his political debut three decades ago, but later fell out and floated a separate political outfit (PPP) in 2011 and then joined the Congress in 2016.
Bid to resurrect the political career
The entry of Manpreet into the BJP is seen as a desperate attempt to revive his flagging political fortunes. Political circles are already buzzing with talk that the party is preparing to contest all 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab in 2024 and may field him from Bathinda.
Though BJP leaders say this is “mere speculation”, since the SAD, a long-time constituent of the NDA, snapped its 24-year-long ties with the BJP, the saffron party has been looking for probable candidates for seats contested by its alliance partner earlier. Kumar said the BJP needs a face in south Malwa, and being a Jat Sikh and a good orator, Manpreet seems to fit the bill.
Before him, former PPCC chief Sunil Jakhar and four former ministers from the party joined the BJP last year.
