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With Congress CM face still on hold, Amarinder steps up his game
Will the Congress announce Captain Amarinder Singh as the chief ministerial candidate in Punjab?
Will the Congress announce Captain Amarinder Singh as the chief ministerial candidate in Punjab? Till that happens — and if at all — the state party chief has decided to step up his game. As elections near, it’s back to sound and fury in the Amarinder camp as the “CM face-in-waiting” tries to get better of his opponents, both within the Congress and outside.
Amarinder, who had junked Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal’s slogan of “will put Badals, Majithia behind bars” saying one needs to follow the law to nail and jail politicians, has been forced to do a volte-face as his loyalists believe AAP’s aggressive posturing has helped create its political equity in Punjab at the expense of the Congress.
Amarinder’s “khunda” politics — threats of beating and hanging ruling Akalis upside down — was believed to have contributed to his party’s drubbing in the 2012 polls and forced him to promise a positive campaign this time round. On Wednesday, Amarinder stormed into a police station in Gurdaspur and served an ultimatum to the station house officer (SHO) to stop “persecution” of Congress workers. He had recently countered Kejriwal by saying he had jailed the Badals when he was the CM and asked who has his government jailed in Delhi. That it was his own party’s former CM Sheila Dikshit that Kejriwal had threatened to put behind bars is just a matter of detail.
What his “Halke Vich Captain” programme could not achieve, Amarinder’s aggressive posturing against the Parkash Singh Badal government on evacuation of border villages has. As the Akalis tried to whip up “patriotic” fervour to beat two-term strong anti-incumbency through “Buland Tiranga Yatra” after the surgical strikes, the Captain flaunted his ex-soldier credentials and openly asked border villagers to defy evacuation orders and stay put. CM Badal, who had been advised bed rest, had to rush to the border to hold “sangat darshans”. A video of Amarinder from a border post in Punjab showing all was quiet on the enemy front went viral prompting the Akali-BJP alliance to accuse him of “compromising” national security. He is camping in border districts till October 15.
He is also trying to beat the AAP at its own game. On Wednesday, the state Congress chief embarked on a door-to-door campaign from Gurdaspur handing out debt waiver maangpatra (pro forma) to farmers and issued them a receipt that promise will be met once he comes to power. Kejriwal too had released a poll manifesto in September promising farmers’ debt waiver.
‘NO MATCH’ WITH SIDHU
With a lobby within the Congress opposing his naming as the CM face, Amarinder on Sunday virtually pre-empted the move of cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu to gain an entry into the Congress through his detractors. Amarinder, who had maintained a studied silence after Sidhu put a condition of not accepting Amarinder as the CM candidate, called the Sidhus “undisciplined” and the former batsman “good only for comedy shows”. He even tried to engineer a split in Sidhuled Awaaz-e-Punjab by only welcoming SAD rebel and former Olympian Pargat Singh. He also broke ranks with his party on need for proof of surgical strikes saying it was an “insult” to the country’s security forces.
Read | Navjot Singh Sidhu can come without riders: Capt Amarinder
But the clean chit by the state vigilance bureau to Amarinder in the Amritsar Improvement Trust case ahead of polls may not help his rebound story. It has only lent credence to the AAP slogan that old foes — Badals and Amarinder — are now new friends, says expelled Congress leader Jagmeet Brar, who has announced his support for the AAP. “It is clear that both the Badals and the BJP are unnerved by the surge of the AAP. While the Akalis fear they would be brought to justice if the AAP wins, the BJP sees it as a threat on the national scene. We do not have to prove the tacit understanding between Amarinder and the Badals. People of Punjab believe it to be true and we only have to say it,” Brar said.
But many political analysts believe the AAP has lost ground after courting controversies, and one party’s loss is another’s gain. “The AAP has slipped and the Congress has gained, mainly in the border belt of Majha and border districts beyond Moga such as Ferozepur and Fazilka. Amarinder struck the right chord on the surgical strikes and even went to border areas. In a personality driven election, the AAP is also losing as unlike Badal and Amarinder, it has no CM face. As for Sidhu, he is over-rated by both the AAP and Congress. He did not speak even on burning issues such as farm suicides in Punjab as an MP. This election will bust the myth of their popularity,” says veteran journalist Gobind Thukral.
