Amarinder returns to political relevance; tipped to be in vice-president race

On March 10, a day before he turned 80, former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh was staring at the possibility of his five-decade-long political career coming to an ignominious end. Countless political obituaries had recounted Singh’s chequered political journey on which curtains were seemingly being drawn as results for the Punjab polls came in.

Singh had faced a crushing defeat from his electoral turf of Patiala Urban – losing the seat he had won on four earlier occasions to Aam Aadmi Party’s Ajit Pal Singh Kotli by a margin of nearly 20,000 votes. The Punjab Lok Congress (PLC) that he had founded after his humiliating exit from the Congress party, that dethroned him as chief minister last September, had also faced a rout across all 37 seats it had contested in the state in alliance with the BJP and the Shiromani Akali Dal (Sanyukt).

With neither age nor Punjab’s changing political landscape on his side, there was little hope of a turnaround of political fortunes for the former two-term chief minister. But then, political soothsayers frenetically writing off the Patiala royal had clearly not factored in the unpredictability of politics.

A little over three months after the rout in Punjab, Singh is once again the subject of frenzied political gossip. Recovering from a spinal surgery in London, the 80-year-old political warhorse is reportedly among probable names the BJP is considering to field as the ruling NDA coalition’s candidate for the August 6 Vice-Presidential polls.

Will Modi-Shah spring a surprise?

Some in the BJP claim that the very fact that Singh’s name is being discussed so publicly as a potential candidate would eventually push him out of the race. Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have built a reputation for springing surprises such as demonstrated recently by Droupadi Murmu’s candidature for the July 8 Presidential polls or on numerous past occasions, including when the saffron front backed Ramnath Kovind and Venkaiah Naidu for President and Vice-President, respectively, in 2017. However, some close to Singh maintain that he was sounded off about his possible candidature by Modi himself when the Prime Minister called the former CM last month to enquire about his health following the spinal surgery.

Also read: Amarinder Singh: The gradual diminishing of a satrap

The rumours about him being on the shortlist of NDA’s probable candidates for the V-P polls also coincide with reports that Singh is expected to merge his PLC into the BJP shortly after his return from London later this month.

A close aide of the former CM told The Federal that the merger had been “finalised before Singh left for London” and only “some nuances are left to be ironed out”. The aide said these nuances include “certain assurances” Singh wants from the BJP to ensure that his political legacy will be carried forward by his son, Raninder Singh, and daughter, Jai Inder Kaur. Similarly, the BJP also wants Singh to ensure that his wife, Patiala MP Preneet Kaur, quits the Congress before the merger. Preneet Kaur had helped Singh’s election campaign against the Congress during the Punjab polls but she hasn’t resigned from the Congress yet.

Another aide of the former CM told The Federal that the NDA backing Singh in the V-P polls was not a “pre-condition to the BJP-PLC merger”. This aide, who was also part of the coterie that ran the affairs of the chief minister’s office during both of Singh’s stints as CM, also claimed that though Singh would “make an excellent Vice-President given his long experience as both an MLA and an MP… the decision to field him or not has to be taken by the BJP and nothing’s definite at this moment”.

In the race for V-P

BJP sources maintain that there are several potential candidates who are being discussed, including Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi who was recently denied a re-nomination to the Rajya Sabha, and incumbent governors Thawarchand Gehlot and Anandiben Patel. A senior leader, who is also part of the BJP’s parliamentary board in which all important decisions of the party are discussed, told The Federal, “several names may be in the public domain and all of them have their own merits or shortcomings but the final decision on who will be fielded will be taken by Modi and Shah… nobody in the party, with the possible exception of our president (JP Nadda), can say they know who we are backing for V-P”.

Whether or not Singh eventually makes the cut as V-P may very well depend on the political value that Modi and Shah see in such a decision. And where Singh is concerned, there are clearly some big political points that his candidature can earn for the BJP.

It is widely acknowledged that despite its electoral might and current stranglehold on power across a majority of states north of the Vindhayas, the Sikh-dominated Punjab has eluded the BJP. The March assembly polls in the state that followed a 15-month long farmer agitation, a visible majority of Punjab’s peasantry against the Centre’s now repealed farm laws, was just one example of the state’s refusal to embrace a Hindu supremacist BJP. In the run up to the Punjab polls and even in the months that have followed it, Modi has personally made a public show of outreach to the Sikh community – repealing the farm laws on Guru Nanak Jayanti, dropping “unannounced” at a Gurudwara in Delhi, hosting delegations of “prominent Sikh leaders” at the PM’s 7, Lok Kalyan Marg residence, et al. Yet none of these have seemingly endeared Modi or his BJP to Punjab.

It may or may not be kosher, but candidates for the presidential or vice-presidential polls are often picked not on consideration of their knowledge, understanding or commitment to India’s Constitution or democratic practices, but on account what they bring to the electoral calculus of their backers. Murmu’s candidature is being hailed as a symbol of the BJP’s commitment towards the cause of tribals and women – two electoral blocs the saffron party has been aggressively wooing for years just as Kovind’s candidature, in 2017, was flagged as a mark of the BJP’s dedication to the cause of Dalits, another crucial voting bloc.

Singh’s strengths

Singh ticks at least three important boxes in the BJP’s political scheme – he belongs to the Sikh community that the Hindutva party hasn’t succeeded in winning over; he represents a state where the BJP has remained a fringe player despite being in power for various stints riding pillion to the Akalis; and, he is an Army veteran who wears his patriotism and allegiance to the Armed Forces on his sleeves, both causes that the BJP vociferously espouses. In fact, Singh’s commitment to the Armed Forces had put the BJP in a spot just last month when he stridently critiqued the Centre’s hugely controversial Agnipath scheme.

If the BJP does back Singh for V-P, it would expectedly try to gain maximum political mileage from the move in Punjab where, over the past few months, it has been bolstering its ranks through turncoats from different parties but most notably from the Congress. These include former Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar and Singh’s cabinet colleagues Raj Kumar Verka, Balbir Singh Sidhu, Sunder Sham Arora and Gurpreet Singh Kangar.

Also read: Simranjit Mann’s Sangrur win is troubling for both Centre, Punjab govt

Singh’s PLC, on its own, has no electoral value in Punjab. Its imminent merger with the BJP, in fact, is reminiscent of how Singh had, in 1998, merged his fledgling Shiromani Akali Dal (Panthic) with the Congress to stay politically relevant after he and his SAD-P miserably lost the 1997 assembly polls. By merging the PLC with the BJP and extracting a commensurate price from the BJP, the Patiala royal may be playing at keeping his political legacy alive. Those close to Singh claim that if he fails to make the cut as a V-P candidate, the former CM may even settle for a gubernatorial stint as long as the BJP promises him that his political heirs will not be pushed into wilderness and that investigations by central agencies that have haunted members of Patiala’s royal family will remain consigned to cold storage as long as the saffron combine is in power.

Whatever Singh’s political fate may be, one thing is certain for now: the 80-year-old Maharaja of Patiala is unlikely to walk into the sunset of his public life anytime soon.