Infighting hurting Cong prospects

Continued infighting within party ranks seems to be seriously affecting Congress's chances in states like Punjab.

With less than a day to go for polling for 13 parliamentary seats in Punjab, differences among leaders of the ruling Congress could benefit the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)-Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) combine.

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Infighting among senior Congress leaders could damage the prospects of party candidates in over half the Lok Sabha seats. The seats where Congress could suffer the most are Patiala, Sangrur, Ludhiana, Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur.

The Congress and its alliance partners in Punjab had nine seats in the dissolved Lok Sabha.

Analysts are now giving just four to six seats to the Congress though Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has exuded confidence about retaining the earlier numbers.

Despite the brave face put on by Singh, sharp differences between him and his deputy Rajinder Kaur Bhattal were evident during the election campaign over the past fortnight.

Bhattal chose to keep a low profile in the campaigning and was hardly seen at public rallies. During the past week, her only public appearances were at Congress president Sonia Gandhi's rallies in Pathankot and Sunam.

Leaders close to the chief minister also did not care to assign campaign duties to Bhattal. "We want to show that it is Amarinder's popularity which matters more than hers," an insider said.

Bhattal, a former chief minister, had led a no-holds barred campaign against Singh in December last year. She and nearly 30 legislators camped in New Delhi for nearly a month, refusing to go back to Punjab without Singh's resignation.

As a compromise worked out by the Congress's top leadership, Bhattal was made deputy chief minister.

Bhattal's supporters created a scene at Sonia's rally at Sunam, the area in Sangrur district to which the deputy chief minister belongs. Amarinder Singh's wife, Preneet Kaur, is contesting from Patiala Lok Sabha seat and Sunam is part of that constituency.

Bhattal's supporters shouted slogans in her favour at Gandhi's rally while ignoring Singh and Preneet, even though the rally was organised to muster support for the chief minister's wife.

Bhattal gleefully acknowledged their sloganeering, hinting that the whole episode was planned, said party insiders.

After the rally, a relative of Bhattal told a TV news channel that those opposing her would have to pay a heavy price in the Lok Sabha polls. The remark was apparently aimed at Preneet and her husband.

Amarinder Singh did not campaign much in Amritsar, where six-time MP Raghunandan Lal Bhatia is seeking re-election against BJP-SAD candidate Navjot Singh Sidhu.

Bhatia faces opposition from local Congressmen and popular former Amritsar mayor Om Prakash Soni, an independent legislator who owes allegiance to the chief minister's camp.

The chief minister was also largely absent from the campaign in Gurdaspur where Sukhbans Kaur Bhinder of Congress is locked in a bitter battle to wrest the seat from film star Vinod Khanna.

In Ludhiana, former MP Gurcharan Singh Galib has not openly campaigned in favour of Congress candidate Manish Tiwari after he was not re-nominated by the party.