Punjab Congress crisis: Baghel holds meetings, assures 'everything will be fine'

As the Congress high command dispatched Bhupesh Baghel to Chandigarh, on Monday (July 6), to quell the rebellion raging within the party’s Punjab unit, senior leader Partap Singh Bajwa offered a peculiar assurance. Drawing parallels with the spasmodic negotiations between the US and Iranian administrations that, until recently, were engaged in a war engulfing West Asia, Bajwa said, “If Trump and Iran can sort things out, then this issue can also be resolved”.

Bajwa may have meant to make light of the intensifying turf war within the faction-ridden Punjab Congress. Yet, his analogy unwittingly summed up the scale of divisions that Baghel and the party high command have to bridge to make the Congress battle-ready for the Assembly polls due in the state in February-March 2027.

Poll panel sparks revolt

Though always a divided house, the Congress in Punjab has become a public spectacle of factional acrimony ever since the party’s central leadership announced, on July 1, a slew of committees linked to next year’s Assembly poll preparations.

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At the centre of the rebellion is the high command’s decision to retain Ludhiana MP Amarinder Singh Raja Warring as the Punjab Congress chief, a post that his rival satraps – Jalandhar MP and former CM Charanjit Singh Channi, Gurdaspur MP Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, former minister Vijay Inder Singla and Bajwa himself – had all been vying for.

The high command’s decision to allow Bajwa to continue as LoP in the state Assembly while naming Channi as chief of the campaign committee, Randhawa as head of the core committee and Singla as chairperson of the election management and coordination panel was meant to be a please-all formula but has ended up stoking an all-out rebellion.

Channi ups the pressure

Channi, of course, was the first to make his move. In a show of strength, the former chief minister and the only Dalit Sikh to ever occupy that post in Punjab, called a meeting of his supporters at his residence in Morinda on July 3. In attendance were scores of sitting and former MLAs. The message from Channi’s Morinda conclave was unequivocal: Raja Warring must be sacked, and the post of state unit chief must pass on to Channi.

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As voices of revolt rose from the Channi camp in Morinda, Randhawa too opened a front in Delhi, blaming the high command for decisions that had caused widespread dissatisfaction.

It was not until July 4 that Raja Warring finally broke his silence on the growing dissent. The Punjab Congress chief, known to share a good rapport with Rahul Gandhi, put up a brave front, asserting that the party remains united and that those gathered at Channi’s residence were all Congress members who wished for the party to win the upcoming elections. Raja Warring’s isolation within the party unit he has led since April 2022 was, however, all too palpable as no leader of any political gravitas stood at his side when he made claims about the Congress’s unity.

Baghel begins outreach

It is amid this acrimony that Baghel, who played a key role in the constitution of the poll panels and continuance of Raja Warring as PCC chief, arrived on a five-day visit to Chandigarh on Monday. “I am here for five days. I will talk to all our party leaders, and everything will be fine,” he told reporters.

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Yet, as Baghel began his troubleshooting exercise, came a twist in the tale that only politicians can pull off. Otherwise seen as leaders of rival camps, Randhawa and Channi seemed to have joined hands in the common quest for Raja Warring’s ouster.

Both leaders posted a photograph on X of Randhawa calling on Channi. The caption: “Unity is Strength”. Clearly, a lot of water had flown in the Satluj since September 2021, when Randhawa had lost out to Channi in the race for replacing Captain Amarinder Singh as Chief Minister. Clutching at straws, Raja Warring too reposted the image, adding the same caption, though his absence from the picture of unity was hard to ignore.

United against Warring

Sources in the Channi camp say they have decided to “boycott” any party meeting in which Raja Warring is present “until the high command reconsiders its decision and agrees to appoint a new PCC chief”.

Whether Channi was willing to accept Randhawa as PCC chief, however, remains unclear, but sources close to the two leaders told The Federal that their “unity is strength” message was meant to tell the high command that “everyone is united against Raja Warring”.

Party insiders say Channi and Randhawa, along with their followers, have sought time from Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Lok Sabha’s Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and AICC general secretary (organisation) KC Venugopal to apprise them of the “anger and frustration of party workers against Raja Warring’s leadership of the Punjab unit”. The two leaders are also of the view that discussing their grievances with Baghel is “pointless”.

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A senior party MLA from the Channi camp said, “We shared our views with Baghel when consultations about these appointments were taking place over the past two months but he backed Raja Warring; we told the high command also… now we just want to speak to Rahul Gandhi again and tell him why these appointments have created complete confusion among workers and the people of Punjab and explain why this will have a very negative impact on the party in the elections”.

Sources close to Randhawa said, “There is no question of rebelling against the party or splitting the party but we want our grievances addressed and we don’t think Baghel can do that now after the high command has made these appointments; we cannot win the elections if Raja Warring remains PCC chief and we have repeatedly explained the reasons for that but if the leadership is unwilling to listen then what should we do?”

High command's dilemma

On Tuesday, Baghel met Raja Warring, the newly appointed working president of the Punjab Congress and some other leaders to discuss the ongoing crisis. He told The Federal that he will reach out to Channi, Randhawa, senior MLAs Rana Gurjeet Singh, Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa and other party leaders for “one-on-one discussions” over the next two days and is “confident that all problems will get sorted out in the party’s interests.”

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Sources said the party had planned to launch a pan-Punjab bus yatra, in which all factional chiefs and senior leaders were expected to travel across all districts of the state and campaign together. With the Channi camp, which appears to be growing by the day, threatening a boycott of Raja Warring, the yatra and other campaign plans have hit a pause even before launch.

If Baghel fails to resolve the stalemate, sources said Kharge, Rahul, and possibly also party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi will be compelled to intervene. However, conceding the demands of the Channi faction now, when the former CM and his supporters have already gone to town expressing their disappointment with the high command’s decision, may only make the Congress president and the Gandhi siblings appear weak.

Echoes of 2021

Party insiders say the mess that the leadership finds itself in now is “as bad as the situation they (high command) had created in 2021”. “Unfortunately no lessons have been learnt and what we are facing today is in a way the byproduct of the high command’s mindless experiments of 2021,” said a Congress MP, adding, “they listened to (Navjot Singh) Sidhu and forced Captain Amarinder Singh to resign as CM but then gave the CM chair to Channi after making a lot of noise about his Dalit Sikh identity, which instantly set off a Channi versus Sidhu contest that cost us the 2022 elections.”

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The MP added, “Now Channi has grown in stature because he is not just a former CM and but also someone who has managed to build a support base beyond his own political turf of Chamkaur… he is from the Malwa region but managed to win a Lok Sabha seat from the Doaba region and now his appeal isn’t just restricted to Dalit Sikhs but has started spreading across other caste groups too, so obviously he is demanding his pound of flesh even if that means questioning the same Rahul Gandhi who picked him up from nowhere and made him CM.”