Punjab: Rahul gives Mann political advice, but will he apply it to himself and Cong too?
It is rare for Indian netas to use a public platform to offer rivals sage advice for political benefit. Through the week gone by, this rarity was frequently replayed as Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY) walked northwards through Punjab towards its final destination of Srinagar in Jammu & Kashmir.
On January 16, addressing a public meeting in Hoshiarpur’s Khudda, Rahul urged Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann to function independently and “not come under pressure” from Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal because “Punjab needs to be governed from Punjab, not Delhi”. The unsolicited but percipient advice was offered again when, a day later, addressing the media in Hoshiarpur’s Gaunspur, Rahul implored Mann to “not allow Punjab to be remote controlled from Delhi”.
The “two RCs”
Then, on January 19, as the BJY finished its Punjab-leg in Pathankot, the former Congress president went a step further and cautioned Mann against the influence of “two RCs – remote control and (AAP’s Rajya Sabha MP) Raghav Chaddha”.
Also read: ‘Don’t run Punjab from Delhi,’ Rahul tells Mann
On each of these occasions, for added measure, Rahul drew on the richly instructive history of Punjab to declare that the state had never acquiesced to outside influence.
Mann, predictably, was livid at being lectured on how to conduct the affairs of government. The CM hit back through a statement rebuking the Wayanad MP for making “baseless” allegations and accusing the Congress of causing “irreparable damage to democratic norms by turning chief ministers into puppets” of the party’s high command in Delhi.
The Punjab CM’s counter-attack, notwithstanding, anyone familiar with Punjab would affirm that Rahul was spot-on in his assessment. Even AAP members in Punjab, both in the party and the government, unofficially agree that the growing public perception of Mann as a CM remote controlled by his counterpart in Delhi has done the state and its ruling party more harm than good.
Yet, it is difficult to look past the stark irony of Rahul generously sharing his wisdom on how to govern Punjab with the CM of a party that is aggressively trying to usurp the Congress’s political space. Currently on a high on account of the massive public support his Kanyakumari to Srinagar foot-march has been drawing, Rahul was, perhaps, overcome by transient amnesia while traversing through Punjab. Had Rahul not repeatedly asserted that “whenever the Congress has ruled Punjab, it has done so with this philosophy (of not remote-controlling the government from Delhi)” it could have been argued that his penitential padyatra had made him reflect upon the blunders that the Congress high command committed while handling the party’s affairs in the state not too long ago.
A reminder of how the Congress high command, of which Rahul continues to be a leading light, had contributed to the party’s electoral downfall in the state came even as the Wayanad MP was busy cautioning Mann against being remote controlled.
Exodus from the Congress
Manpreet Badal, who served as finance minister in the Amarinder Singh and Charanjit Singh Channi-led Congress governments till the party lost the polls to the AAP, walked out of the Grand Old Party and into the BJP, on January 17. In his resignation letter, curiously addressed to Rahul and not Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Badal said, “the manner in which the Congress party has conducted its affairs and taken decision, specifically with regards to Punjab, has been disheartening to say the least. The coterie of men entrusted with the authority to dictate Delhi’s writ to the Punjab unit of the Congress are far from sound”.
The Congress has, expectedly, brushed aside Badal’s broadside as being “baseless” – just as Mann rejected the same charge levied on him by Rahul. Rahul hasn’t responded to the specific charge made by Badal. Instead, he has expressed happiness at an entire panoply of senior Congress members – over a dozen, including former CM Amarinder Singh, former PCC chief Sunil Jakhar, former ministers Raj Kumar Verka, Balbir Singh Sidhu, Sunder Sham Arora and GS Kangar – moving to the BJP in just the past eight months, dubbing them “riffraff”.
Also read: Ex-Punjab FinMin Manpreet Badal joins BJP; ‘clouds have cleared,’ says Cong
Sources say a number of other senior Congress leaders, including at least three of the party’s seven serving Lok Sabha MPs, are weighing the option of joining either the AAP or the BJP in the coming months. “The only reason that these MPs are not quitting just yet is because they do not wish to give up their Lok Sabha membership but several senior leaders who lost the assembly polls could quit the party because of various reasons,” said a party leader.
This leader argued that though “Rahul is correct in saying that there is a lot of pressure from the ED, CBI and other agencies on our leaders, it would be wrong to say that everyone who is quitting is doing so because of fear of persecution on account of being corrupt… Rahul must understand that there are many deficiencies in our organisation that have either been created directly by him or due to the people he has handpicked to run party affairs; he also should realise that when he publicly derides everyone who quits as being corrupt he indirectly concedes that corruption was flourishing in the Congress under his watch.”
The issue here, however, is not of people deserting the Congress in Punjab – after all, this attrition isn’t unique to the party’s Punjab unit – but of how and why the party has so swiftly degenerated in a state it ruled with an absolute majority till less than a year ago.
Questionable decisions
In Rahul’s assessment, the Congress lost power in Punjab almost entirely due to “heavy anti-incumbency against our government”, but ask anyone in the party off-the-record and they’d concede this to be only partially true.
“If only he had heeded the same advice that he is now offering Mann, we wouldn’t have been where we are today in Punjab. It was the Congress high command, specifically Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi, that wrote the epitaph of our government by approving an open rebellion against Amarinder Singh, then obstinately backing Navjot Singh Sidhu for PCC chief and finally by foisting an untested man like Charanjit Singh Channi as the CM and going overboard with their ‘first Dalit CM of Punjab’ campaign. Rahul was repeatedly cautioned that this kind of politics will be counter-productive; Punjabis will see it as an assault on their pride but he didn’t listen,” a Congress Lok Sabha MP from the state told The Federal.
Congress insiders say Rahul’s “interference” in the affairs of Punjab hasn’t ebbed even after the party’s debilitating assembly poll rout at the hands of the AAP. “Nothing really has changed for the better in the past 10 months. With a slew of high-profile desertions, the party has practically been hollowed out in Punjab. (Amarinder Singh) Raja Warring (Rahul aide, who was appointed state Congress chief months after the poll loss) continues to take instructions from Rahul as does Harish Chaudhary (the Congress’s Punjab in-charge), who should ideally have been sacked long ago in wake of the many serious complaints, including rent-seeking in ticket distribution and organisational appointments, a cross-section of state unit leaders made against him,” said a senior Punjab Congress office-bearer.
The Sidhu conundrum
Even as Rahul was passing through the state with his co-travellers in the yatra, rumours began circulating that Sidhu, currently in prison due to his conviction in the 1988 road rage case, was assured by Priyanka of an “important position” within the party upon his release from jail, which some believe may happen as early as January 26, four months before the completion of his one-year sentence. Raja Warring told The Federal that there was “no basis” to these rumours and Sidhu’s future role in the party “will be decided after he finishes his jail term”.
Also read: Where is Channi? Punjab Congress poster boy’s silence raises questions
However, the buzz has already made a section of Punjab Congress wary of what awaits the party after the mercurial former cricketer, with his penchant for attacking colleagues more than political opponents, gets out of jail. “A key reason for the confusion and chaos that eventually swept the Congress out of power was Sidhu and the way Rahul and Priyanka not only tolerated but encouraged his antics to first undermine Amarinder Singh as CM and then force him out of the party. I can only hope that Rahul and Priyanka have learnt their lesson after the harakiri that Sidhu caused during the elections and that they will not force him on the party again because if they do, then whatever is left of the Congress in Punjab will also be wiped out before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls,” said senior journalist and former AAP MLA Kanwar Sandhu.
Days away from finishing his BJY, Rahul, his colleagues and admirers believe, has earned an aura of a sage, a ‘tapasvi’, at the vanguard of an ideological battle to protect the country’s diversity and socio-economic interests. To these cheerleaders, the avuncular flair with which Rahul advised Mann is, perhaps, a manifestation of the political maturity and social consciousness that their leader has gained through his daunting 3,500 kilometre cross-country walkathon. What remains to be seen, though, is whether, moving forward, the former Congress chief also adheres to the advice that he is so freely offering to his opponents.
