Chandigarh, July 13
The appointment of Mr Shamsher Singh Dullo as president of the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC), is a major setback to the Punjab Chief Minster, Capt Amarinder Singh, and his camp followers. Mr Dullo and Capt Amarinder Singh have never been close allies in the party.

Capt Amarinder Singh had been openly supporting the incumbent president, Mr H.S. Hanspal, for another term. However, overruling, perhaps for the first time, Capt Amarinder Singh, the Congress high command selected the Dalit leader, Mr Dullo, as president. It appears Mrs Sonia Gandhi, President of the Congress, did not even listen to Mrs Ambika Soni, who was discreetly backing the candidature of Mr Hanspal for a second term.

Obviously, Mr Dullo is a personal choice of Mrs Gandhi, who has been impressed by his performance on various occasions. In fact, some time ago, when Mr Dullo spoke in the presence of Mrs Gandhi at a meeting of the All-India Congress Committee, she was so impressed by his straight talk that she sent for him to give him a pat on his back.

At that meeting, Mr Dullo was perhaps the only leader to tell Mrs Gandhi from the dais that the main reason for the decline of the party was that it (Congress) had been captured by feudal lords and moneybags while committed workers and activists had been reduced to non-entities. Later, his performance in Jharkhand with regard to the reorganisation of the party unit had also impressed Mrs Gandhi.

Mr Dullo, a law graduate from Panjab University, held his first important public position as president of the Municipal Committee of Khanna about three decades ago. Though he was elected an MLA from Khanna in 1980, he came into the limelight during the government of Beant Singh in which he was the Excise and Taxation Minister.

Later, he was elected Member of Parliament from Ropar but lost the last time to Mr Sukhdev Singh Libra by a margin of a few thousand votes. His wife, Mrs Harbans Kaur, a Parliamentary Secretary in the Punjab Government, is the MLA from Khanna.

What one can say with certainty about Mr Dullo is that he will not be anybody’s “rubber stamp.” He is an independent-minded and gutsy politician. He has the courage to call a spade a spade. At the moment he is not identified with any group. As he has risen from the ranks, he personally knows most of the Congress activists in the state and can decide who is to be given what responsibility at the party level.

There are two major factors which weighed in his favour. First, Punjab is a state with the highest Dalit population in the country. And Dalits, by and large, have been supporting the Congress since Independence. As both the Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister are from Jat Sikh families in Punjab, Mrs Gandhi was eager to give some important position in the state to a Dalit leader. And Mr Dullo became her first choice.

The other important factor that went in his favour is that he is a leader who will not hesitate to tell the truth to Mrs Gandhi about the performance of his party’s Government, Ministers and party MLAs in the state. And he has the ability to gear up the party. As Assembly elections are due to be held in the next 18 months in the state, Mr Dullo’s role will be crucial in deciding the party candidates for that poll.

“As he can’t be overawed by any state leader, he will not endorse the nomination of any party MLA or Minister whose performance is below the desired level, in the next Assembly elections”, says his close confidant. Following his taking over as president, there will be surely realignments in the party.

Though there was nothing against Mr Hanspal he proved to be a soft and non- assertive president and this trait was not liked by the party high command. “The party leadership was expecting from him periodic reports about the overall performance of the state government, Ministers and MLAs but Mr Hanspal did not perform this duty to the satisfaction of the party high command”, said a senior Congress leader.