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Congress to name Punjab CM candidate on Feb 6
Rahul Gandhi will be in Ludhiana to address a virtual rally – his second campaign meeting in the state -- where the announcement is expected to be made
Rahul Gandhi is set to name the Congress party’s chief ministerial candidate for the February 20 elections in Punjab on Sunday amid an open duel between chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi and the party’s unit president Navjot Singh Sidhu.
Gandhi will be in Ludhiana to address a virtual rally – his second campaign meeting in the state -- where the announcement is expected to be made.
The party is currently carrying out a tele-survey to get the opinion of voters, and taking feedback from other candidates and district functionaries to pick its CM candidate. In the survey, voters are given three options – Channi, Sidhu, or go without a CM face -- through a pre-recorded message and an interactive voice response menu to make their choice.
The timing of the declaration was indicated on Thursday by Channi during an election meeting in Chamkaur Sahib. “The chief ministerial face is going to be announced. Rahul Gandhi ji will address (the rally) and I will be with him,” he told his supporters, urging them to assemble for viewing the rally that will be telecast live on social media and in all 117 assembly segments.
The fact that it was Channi who broke this news suggested that he was the front-runner in a protracted -- but sometime acrimonious and sometime amicable -- tussle between him and Sidhu.
During his first virtual rally in Punjab on January 27, Gandhi announced that the party will go into the state polls with a CM face, and the decision will eventually be taken after consulting party workers.
This was a change from the party’s earlier position. The Congress leadership has indicated for the past several weeks that it would go into the polls under the “collective leadership” of Channi, Sidhu and former state chief Sunil Jakhar. People aware of the matter said the change in thinking came amid pressure from state unit leaders and by rival Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) naming Bhagwant Mann as its CM face.
The tele-survey exercise, which started on four days ago, has further fuelled the tension between the Channi and Sidhu factions. The people cited above said that there is growing clamour in the state unit that Channi, the first Dalit chief minister of the state in seven decades who took over September 20, be declared as the candidate. Several cabinet ministers, former state unit chiefs, and sitting legislators have thrown their weight behind him, they added.
“If Channi is picked, it will help us get some votes. In case he is ignored, we can image the damage,” a senior party leader said, adding that a big chunk of the Scheduled Caste voters -- the largest single voting block in the state that makes up 32% of the population -- are likely to back him.
Though Sidhu did not comment on the impending announcement, his wife, former MLA Navjot Kaur Sidhu, stirred the pot on Thursday by saying her husband “is a hero and will be a hero”. Though she suggested that he deserved to be picked, she added: “[It} doesn’t matter who will be chief minister. The only thing that matters is that whoever will be the CM, should listen to ministers, sign their files and let them work.”
Sidhu also had a long-running tussle with chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh that saw him quit the cabinet in July 2019. He later led a rebellion against Amarinder, making a comeback as the state president despite the latter’s objections. Amarinder had to resign on September 18, 2021, after several ministers and MLAs turned against him and started pressing for his removal.
AAP state chief and chief ministerial candidate Bhagwant Mann said the Congress was delaying the announcement of its CM face due to fear of a split in the party. “Also, their (Congress) high command is still in doubt whether to announce the CM face or go into the polls without declaring one,” he said, accusing the Congress of imitating his party after calling its (AAP’s) survey fake.
