Congress misreads Punjab again; ‘revamp’ shows leadership’s fear of cracking the whip

After a slew of swift and some bold organisational decisions over the past month, the Congress party’s appointments in its Punjab unit offer no sign of course-correction ahead of next year’s assembly polls.

Instead, the appointments announced late Wednesday (July 1) expose a high command vulnerable to arm-twisting, fearful of cracking the whip against warring leaders and unable to grasp Punjab’s socio-political moorings.

For nearly two months now, the Congress high command had let a perception of imminent leadership change in the Punjab unit to grow.

Organisational revamp

Amid spiralling factional feuds among state leaders and the party’s continuing electoral setbacks, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Lok Sabha’s Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and AICC general secretary (organization) KC Venugopal held multiple rounds of discussions with their Punjab colleagues to finalise an organisational revamp.

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Last month, the party also appointed Ajay Maken, Meenakshi Natarajan and Bhajan Lal Jatav as central observers ostensibly to evolve consensus on a possible change of guard in the Punjab Congress. Sources told The Federal that a political consultancy firm, engaged to assist with the Punjab poll preparations, was also asked for feedback about who among the party’s leaders is best poised to lead the state unit into the assembly elections due in February-March 2027.

Yet, as Kharge signed off on the organisational appointments on July 1, what emerged was a desperate exercise to keep the party united and the jaded concept of balancing caste equations. For Punjab’s voters, though, there was only more confusion on offer about who really will lead the Congress’s charge against Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s AAP government in next year’s assembly polls.

Underperformers stay on

If Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, under whose charge the party’s electoral atrophy has continued since the 2022 assembly poll rout across Punjab, was allowed to continue as Punjab Congress chief, party veteran Partap Singh Bajwa was allowed to stay on as Leader of Opposition despite his uninspiring performance in the state Assembly.

Sources told The Federal that a bulk of Punjab Congress leaders, as well as the political consultancy firm hired by the party, had strongly urged the high command to replace Raja Warring, who is also the Congress MP from Ludhiana, as the state unit chief citing his ineffective leadership. In a conversation with Rahul last month, a senior Punjab Congress MP is even learnt to have cited the party’s rout last month in the Gidderbaha municipal council elections (of the 19 wards, the AAP won 17 wards against the Congress’s two) and the AAP’s win in the Ludhiana West assembly bypoll last year and said, “How can someone who couldn’t help the party win elections in his backyard lead us to victory across the state?”

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That despite strong voices of no-confidence against Raja Warring’s leadership the party chose to maintain status quo is now being blamed by a section of leaders on the Punjab Congress chief’s proximity to Rahul and also to Bhupesh Baghel, the party’s Punjab in-charge, who many in the state unit see as an appointee of Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi.

Keeping everyone happy

Unable to enforce any change in the leadership of the state unit and the legislative party, the high command appears to have taken refuge in the long-standing template of accommodating all key factional leaders across various poll-related committees.

As such, former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi, who until two days ago was seen as the frontrunner to replace Raja Warring as the state president, has now been chosen as chairperson of the campaign committee for the assembly polls. Handpicked by Rahul Gandhi in 2021 to replace then chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh, Channi, the only Dalit Sikh to ever head the Punjab government, has interestingly maintained a deafening silence on the new task assigned to him; refraining even from the perfunctory expression of gratitude to the central leadership.

Sources said the central leadership had “almost finalised” Channi’s name for Punjab Congress chief last month based on “independently conducted assessment of public mood”. The former CM, too, is learnt to have lobbied for the role citing the impressive turnaround for the Congress in the recent municipal elections in his electoral turf of Chamkaur Sahib. What hit Channi’s prospects, however, was “strong resistance” from leaders like Raja Warring, Bajwa, Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, Pargat Singh and Gurjeet Singh Aujla, among others.

Perplexing equations

A leader who was part of the discussions the high command had with the Punjab unit told The Federal that at least two senior party MPs implored Rahul against appointing Channi as the state unit chief. These MPs, it is learnt, argued that Channi could prove to be a liability for the party on two counts—first, his penchant for making controversial remarks, second, and more importantly, as he still has cases being investigated against him by the Enforcement Directorate and the state vigilance bureau, which both BJP and AAP could use to target not just him but the Congress during the elections.

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The anti-Channi camp is also said to have reminded Kharge and Rahul that the former CM, who is currently the party’s MP from Jalandhar, had not just lost both the assembly constituencies—Chamkaur Sahib and Bhadaur—he contested from in 2022 but had also “disappeared for several months” immediately after the Congress’s statewide defeat instead of staying in Punjab to rebuild the party.

With senior leaders rallying against his appointment as state unit chief, the high command seems to have prioritized inner-party consensus over public sentiment, which according to the Congress’s own internal ground-level surveys, was in Channi’s favour. As a result, what the high command finalised on July 1 is a poor equilibrant of conflicting leadership claims—Raja Warring leading the party unit, Bajwa leading the legislative party and Channi leading the campaign—that is bound to leave both, Congress ticket aspirants in the state and, more importantly, the voter perplexed.

The pitch of ‘collective leadership’

The Congress, of course, hopes to pitch this arrangement as one of “collective leadership”, showcasing a string of leaders across castes and regions, as opposed to the AAP or the Akali Dal which have to rely entirely on Bhagwant Mann and Sukhbir Singh Badal, respectively, to draw in voters.

This high-wire act by the Congress has been replicated in other poll committees too. Six of the party’s seven Lok Sabha MPs from the state have been assigned roles—Raja Warring as state chief, Channi as campaign chief, Randhawa heading the core committee, Amar Singh chairing the manifesto panel, Dharamvira Gandhi acting as one of the co-chairs of the campaign committee and Gurjeet Singh Aujla named among the four co-chairpersons of the manifesto panel. Vijay Inder Singla, a senior Hindu face of the party, has been appointed chief of the election management and coordination committee.

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Senior state leaders Sukhwinder Singh Danny, Raj Kumar Verka, and Sangat Singh Gilzian have been roped in as working presidents of the Punjab Congress. MLAs and former MLAs Sukhpal Singh Khaira, Rana Gurjeet Singh, Pargat Singh, Razia Sultana, Angad Singh Saini, Bharat Bhushan Ashu, OP Soni, Hardial Singh Kamboj, Kuljit Singh Nagra and Sukhbinder Singh Sarkaria have also been accommodated as co-chairpersons of various poll panels.

Misreading Punjab, again

On the face of it, the please-all exercise offers something to every faction while also appearing to be balanced in terms of representing various influential caste groups—Jat Sikhs, Dalit Sikhs and Hindus. Yet, sources in the party claim what the appointments also expose is how Rahul, in the over four years since the party’s 2022 defeat, continues to “misread Punjab after the absolute failure of his experiment to reimagine our political landscape purely on caste lines”.

“Back in 2021, when Channi was appointed CM by forcing Captain saheb’s (Amarinder Singh) resignation and Navjot Singh Sidhu was made the PCC chief, those advising Rahul projected the decision as some masterstroke… they went to town saying Rahul had given the state its first Dalit Sikh CM in a state where Dalits constitute nearly 32 percent of the population and that the Jat Sikhs (estimated to comprise nearly 25 percent of the population) had got representation with Sidhu taking charge of the party but what was the result? Channi lost from both seats he contested and Sidhu also lost,” a senior Punjab Congress leader told The Federal.

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The leader, a former minister in the Amarinder Singh and Channi Cabinets, added, “There was neither Jat Sikh consolidation nor Dalit consolidation for our party because this kind of caste politics, which works in UP or Bihar, doesn’t work in Punjab. Here, caste and communal identities don’t define party loyalties, which is one of many reasons why the BJP has not been able to build itself in the state while the Congress could recover even from the taint of the anti-Sikh riots and form the government thrice since 1984. We made a complete mess in 2022 when Channi went about flaunting his Dalit Sikh identity, and Sunil Jakhar (now in the BJP) went around saying he wasn’t made CM because he is a Hindu while Sidhu continued to throw his tantrums throughout the campaign. Unfortunately, we seem to have learnt no lessons from that misadventure.”

Lost opportunity

Another party veteran lamented that the high command’s inability to set the Congress’s affairs in order at a time when the AAP was battling a “massive political crisis” due to Chief Minister Mann’s run-ins with the Akal Takht, the highest temporal body of Sikhism, and the AAP administration’s “failure on all fronts”, threatens to “derail our poll campaign even before it starts”.

This leader said Kharge and Rahul’s “decisive interventions” in resolving the Karnataka leadership crisis, forming a new alliance in Tamil Nadu (with chief minister Vijay’s TVK) and appointing various new state in-charges in recent months had “given us hope that the confusion over leadership in Punjab will also resolved”.

For now, though, that seems to be a misplaced hope.