The mess in Punjab is self-inflected by the Congress.
Among the states going to the polls early next year are Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Goa and Punjab. Till the beginning of the month, it appeared that with the exception of Punjab the Congress would lose the other four states. With the unceremonious departure of Captain Amarinder Singh, Punjab too will be lost. That will leave the Congress in office in one major state, Rajasthan. Chhattisgarh is precariously poised.
In Maharashtra and Kerala, the Congress is an insignificant and ignored junior partner.
The appellation, “Congress high command” is a misnomer. There was once a high command. No longer so. Yet, regrettably, no one challenges the trio—Shrimati Sonia Gandhi, Shri Rahul Gandhi and Shrimati Vadra. Even the group of 23 is no longer heard of. One or two of its members do speak. Number Ten Janpath ignores them.
For the past few years, the performance of the party in Uttar Pradesh has been pitiful. In 2017, its tally in UP was 7 out of 403 seats.
I shall now take up the self-inflected mess in Punjab. The general secretary in charge of Punjab, Shri Harish Rawat has the knack of making confusion more confounding by his incoherence and contradictory pronouncements—he has one foot in Uttarakhand, his home state and another in Punjab. His head and heart are in his home state. He aspires to become Chief Minister. A perfectly legitimate desire. But he wants to have the cake and eat it too.
One day he says Amarinder Singh will lead the Congress in the Assembly elections. Then he suggests that Navjot Singh Sidhu would be that face. Next it will be Shri Sidhu and the newly elected Chief Minister jointly. He also pronounced that the elections would be fought under the leadership of Smt Sonia Gandhi, who is largely incommunicative. She is supposed to be unwell. But well enough to go to Mashobra, in Himachal Pradesh for a holiday.
How did the great cricketer and TV comedian popular in Pakistan become Pradesh Congress Committee president in spite of the opposition of Chief Minister Amarinder Singh? It is alleged that Shri Sidhu has the backing of Shrimati Vadra. What has she to do with Punjab? She is general secretary of UP.
Shri Rahul Gandhi resigned as Congress president sometime back. Now he holds no post in the party. Nevertheless, he is calling all the shots. Power without responsibility.
Both brother and sister have attractive and engaging personalities. However, they are no longer young. They are knocking on the doors of middle age. If I am not mistaken, Rahul Gandhi was born in 1971 and his sister two years later. Yet the party refers to them as young leaders.
Being the second senior most Congress Chief Minister, the straightforward and non-intriguing Captain Amarinder Singh was a victim of his complacency. The party deceived him by keeping him in the dark about a meeting of the PCC, where a new Chief Minister was chosen. He had no option but to resign. He said he had been “humiliated and insulted”. He felt hurt.
Congress spokesperson—a lady named Supriya Shrinate—on the 23rd, lectured the former Chief Minister: “He is our elder and the elderly often get angry and say a lot of things. We respect his anger, age and experience. We hope he does reconsider his words. But there is no space in politics for anger, envy, enmity, vendetta and personal attacks and comments against political opponents.”
This does little credit to the spokesperson. Politics is not a game of table tennis. It is a deadly power game. Is she aware of the raging bouts of anger of several eminent Congress leaders, including Jawaharlal Nehru? I was once at the receiving end of his not so affectionate wrath. I worked closely with Indira Gandhi from 1966 to 1971. Her anger made senior Congress cabinet ministers shiver in their dhotis. Rajiv Gandhi’s anger is well known. He was a most likeable human being, but his lapse into ill-temper could be unnerving. He once shouted at the Chief Ministers of Andhra and Rajasthan in public.
Gandhiji’s controlled indignation is well known. He made it impossible for Subhas Chandra Bose to continue as Congress president when Bose crossed his path in 1938-39.
What will Amarinder Singh do next? He will hit where it hurts most. Whatever chances the Congress had of winning the Assembly elections in Punjab early next year are more or less over.