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Distantly Close | In fratricidal mode, Congress is its own worst enemy in Punjab
Technically, the Captain remains a Congressman as he hasn’t yet formally quit the party. That makes fratricidal the slugfest which isn’t helping either side
New Delhi: The ruling Congress is making headlines for all the wrong reasons in Punjab, where a powerful party faction driven by its visceral distaste of the ousted chief minister (CM), Captain Amarinder Singh, has provided the party’s rivals a platter full of issues they are bound to exploit in the upcoming polls.
To upend an electoral tie up between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a regional outfit the Captain intends floating, the group opposed to him has lately raised questions about his long-standing friendship with Aroosa Alam, a lady journalist from Pakistan.
The apparent game plan, the efficacy of which remains in the realm of conjecture, is to disqualify Singh as a putative BJP ally by demolishing the national security plank he had built to shine in contrast with his chief detractor, Navjot Sidhu, by making an issue of the latter’s friendship with Pakistan premier Imran Khan.
Rarely has Pakistan acquired such centrality in the political discourse in the state where a constituency always existed for peace with the eastern neighbor for historical, economic and religious reasons.
Sidhu, now president of the Congress’s Punjab unit, had attended Khan’s 2018 inauguration without Singh’s approval, even as he was a minister in the state government. He returned from there with an in-principle promise from the Pak Army chief, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, for opening the Kartarpur corridor to the much revered Sikh Shrine across the border where the founder of the faith, Guru Nanak, spent the last 18 years of his life. A bilateral India-Pakistan pact under the Narendra Modi regime has since made the passage to the shrine a reality.
Factional conflicts weakening Channi
Technically, the Captain remains a Congressman as he hasn’t yet formally quit the party. That makes fratricidal the slugfest which isn’t helping either side. An immediate collateral sufferer of the internecine battle is the new CM, Charanjit Singh Channi, who cuts a hopelessly sorry figure despite working hard to keep the party’s electoral campaign formidable.
The chaos has come to cast a shadow on his council of ministers, what with his home minister, Sukhjinder Randhawa, wading into the controversy by first announcing and then seeking to wriggle out of his proposal to probe Aroosa Alam’s alleged links with the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
A one-time Sidhu groupie, Randhawa was an aspirant to the CM’s office he lost to Channi, a Dalit, whose elevation was expected to give a fillip to the Congress’s electoral prospects. That euphoria could dissipate if it hasn’t already, thanks to the internal mud-slinging.
A former IPS officer, Mohammad Mustafa, whom the Captain overlooked for promotion as director general of police, is now an adviser to Sidhu. Leading the offensive to embarrass the former CM, he posted on twitter Aroosa’s photographs with a civil servant- power-couple: Dinkar Gupta, who superseded him as DGP, and his IAS wife Vinnie Mahajan, who was the state chief secretary under Singh.
Mustafa shared the photograph with remarks suggestive of the clout Aroosa wielded on account of her proximity to the then CM.”DGP and the CS in the lap of…??” he mocked.
The jibe didn’t go unanswered, as the former CM’s media advisor hit back with Aroosa’s snapshots with Mustafa’s daughter-in-law and wife, who is a minister in the Channi cabinet. But it didn’t end with that. He also shared a photograph of Congress president Sonia Gandhi with the Captain’s Pakistani friend. If needed, this was the evidence of flames lit in Punjab reaching the Congress top-brass.
The exchanges were no less sharp between Randhawa and Singh, who asked as to why the former never complained about Aroosa as a minister in his cabinet. “She has been coming for 16 years with due GoI (Government of India) clearances. Or are you alleging that both the NDA and the Congress-led UPA governments in this period connived with the ISI?” The Captain dared the minister to show results instead on his “tall promises” on cases of sacrilege on which he and other rebels had accused him of going soft in the campaign for his removal.
New Congress official has his task cut out
It goes without saying therefore that the Congress’s new points-person in Punjab, Harish Chaudhary (a minister in the Ashok Gehlot government in Rajasthan), has his task cut out in the state where the party is proving to be its own worst enemy. The no-holds-barred factional tussle is to the Opposition’s delight, weakening badly the Congress’s narrative for the upcoming polls.
The irony is that the latest disparaging Twitter storm was triggered by Chaudhary’s predecessor, Harish Rawat, whose valedictory comments in the media attributed Singh’s threat of an alliance with the BJP to his vulnerabilities: “The fact of the matter is (that) there are some compulsions…the way a Pakistani citizen was living as his guest….the central government has something.”
Dirty linen has since been washed in mounds in public. There has been a furious response to Rawat’s comments on him by Anandpur Sahib MP Manish Tiwari, who’d barely hidden his reservations on the way Singh was removed as CM. The litany of self goals has even seen Sidhu exculpating by implication the Shiromani Akali Dal and the BJP when he called Singh the “architect” of the farm laws the Centre brought to open the agriculture sector to private business. To show his bête noire down, he has risked hoisting with his own petard the party he leads in Punjab.
The reality is that the farmers’ stir against the legislations under contest in the courts and on the streets, had given the Congress a moral high vis-a-vis the Akalis and the BJP, who were partners in the National Democratic Alliance when the cabinet cleared the laws. The pot shots Sidhu took at Singh could reverse the battle of perception, giving the Akalis and the Aam Aadmi Party, the principal opposition in the state assembly, the talking points they need to clobber the Congress in the people’s court.
Kejriwal smells opportunity for power
“We’re strong and will fight for forming the government in Punjab,” AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal told this writer. He said the party will soon project a CM-face in the state which is high on its agenda of expansion beyond Delhi.
Kejriwal’s frequent visits to Punjab are as much of an indication of his party being upbeat.
It is about time that the Congress understood that it cannot be blemish-free while blaming its own former CM for actions that weren’t of his doing. If it continues, the opprobrious duel could result in mutual and equal destruction of the warning groups.
In some ways, chickens have come home to roost for the Captain who, out of pique and a sense of humiliation, had fired the first salvo by giving a national security twist to Sidhu’s cross-border bonhomie. He’d bargained for the blowback he’s now facing over a relationship of which he made no secrets.
In the din and bustle of elections, salacious peeps into personal lives of public figures often transcend serious policy debates. Former Punjab Congress president Sunil Jakhar had a historical-literary take on the Captain’s plans/ predicament: “It wasn’t Czarina or her nationality! It was corrupt/scandalous Rasputin wielding influence through her which led to an end of Czar Nicholas’ rule. Pray, beware of the Punjabi Rasputin (s), who seem not quiet done with ‘their liege’ yet, and are still digging deeper for him.”
But Jakhar’s party has more at stake than the Captain, who is willing to get bruised in return for inflicting a fatal blow on the poll prospects of the Congress, from which he thinks he got a raw deal in the twilight of his political life.
Amarinder’s threat may not ring true
Singh’s challenge could well be a non-starter, predicated as it is on the Centre agreeing to a modus vivendi on the farm laws. Miracles do happen in politics. But the possibility of Narendra Modi taking back the contentious laws seems remote. Without the fig leaf he needs to shift allegiance, the former CM will be as unacceptable as the BJP currently is in the agrarian state where he had towered over most other leaders till destiny turned its back.
Handicapped as much by his advancing years, Singh hasn’t disclosed the exact nature of his engagements with the Centre to make it rethink the laws. He hasn’t also reached out to the breakaway Akali Dal (Sanyukt) of S S Dhindsa and R S Brahmpura after blandly claiming that they were on his list of potential allies.
In fact, Dhindsa isn’t enthused much by Singh’s overtures through the media. He considers improbable the prospects of the BJP climbing down on the farm laws or the Samyukta Kisan Morcha accepting the Captain’s mediation to unlock the tangle. “Why would Modi or the farmers,” he told HT, “let the captain grab credit when he himself brings little to the table…..”
Even in the outside chance of a deal working out on the farm laws, it’ll be difficult for any BJP led formation to strike roots in Punjab. The Lakhimpur Kheri killings have rendered the political turf trickier for the saffron party.
vinodsharma@hindstantimes.com
