After Jalandhar drubbing, fissures resurface in Congress

Rajmeet Singh & Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh/Jalandhar, July 15

Days after patting their back for securing seven seats in the Lok Sabha elections, drubbing for the Congress in the recently held Jalandhar (West) Assembly bypoll has brought to the fore the tussle of one-upmanship among top leaders in the party.

Within 40 days of Charanjit Singh Channi recording a huge victory as Jalandhar MP, the party was reduced to third position with garnering just 16,000 votes from 44,000 votes polled from the Assembly segment in the Lok Sabha elections. Party leaders feel that it was a worrisome trend ahead of byelections in four Assembly segments — Gidderbaha, Barnala, Chabbewal and Dera Baba Nanak.

Not only raising question mark over the popularity of Channi as Dalit leader, the loss brought to the fore the differences between PPCC chief Amarinder Raja Warring and Channi that ultimately led to a botched up election campaign. Moreover, some of the senior party leaders from Ludhiana and Jalandhar were not roped in during the campaign.

Warring and Channi were seen together on just one stage on June 29 where the party workers from across Punjab had been called in for distribution of duties. Ever since, they did not even see each other eye to eye. “The pictures of Warring were missing from the party posters during the campaign. After the PPCC chief landed in Jalandhar for campaign, Channi went on the back foot. The duties assigned by Channi were changed during the campaign,” said sources in the party.

Party leaders admit that after Sushil Rinku, who represented Jalandhar (West) before leaving Congress in April 2023, the party did not establish local leadership and no halqa in-charge was appointed. It is learnt that Channi was interested in the rejoining of MS Kaypee, former Congress minister who had joined the Akali Dal before Lok Sabha poll, back to the Congress and give him the Jalandhar (West) ticket. But that did not work and candidature of Surinder Kaur was announced.

Seeking accountability of the top leadership, it is being pointed out that party leaders like MLAs Rana Gurjeet Singh, Hardev S Laddi Sherowalia and Bawa Henry were on a foreign tour since the campaigning for Jalandhar West bypoll started.

Veteran Congress leaders from Jalandhar Amarjit S Samra and Avtar Henry, too, have said that byelections were usually won by the ruling government. “The AAP, too, used all its money and muscle power like other traditional parties. But there must have been some shortcomings with the Congress too. I hope that the party will hold a meeting soon to discuss its huge drop in vote percentage in Jalandhar West,” said Henry. Samra too hinted, “Sometimes, there are people within the party who do not want a new leader to emerge. Such factors could also have been at play.”