With Channi as CM face, Congress takes a leap of faith in Punjab

A fortnight before Punjab votes to elect a new government, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi announced at a rally in Ludhiana on February 6, that incumbent CM Charanjit Singh Channi will remain the party’s CM face for the polls.

The long-drawn and self-damaging suspense built up by the party over its CM face has now ended — and with a predictable outcome. An immediate — and by all means crucial — relief for the state’s ruling party has been the vocal acceptance of Gandhi’s endorsement for Channi by the mercurial Punjab Congress chief, Navjot Singh Sidhu, who had made no secret of his aspirations for the top job; often embarrassing the party and Channi while doing so.

For most leaders of the Punjab Congress, Channi had become Gandhi’s natural choice for the job almost as soon as he was chosen to replace Amarinder Singh last September. Once the Congress gave Punjab its first-ever Dalit Sikh CM in Channi and went to town hailing it as proof of Gandhi’s commitment to empowerment of the oppressed, there was little scope for the party to denounce Channi ahead of the polls and choose someone else as the CM face.

Replacing Channi after the hype over his caste-identity would have proved electorally suicidal for the Congress not just in Punjab, where every third person is a Dalit, but also in poll-bound UP and Uttarakhand that have a substantial Dalit electorate.

To Channi’s credit, he also proved his mettle as a savvy, even if accidental, CM. In the 111 days that he worked as CM before the poll code kicked in, he navigated administrative, political and social challenges with remarkable ease — outsmarting not just the voluble Sidhu but even Prime Minister Narendra Modi when the latter kicked up a political storm over allegations of breach in his security during an aborted visit to Punjab’s Ferozepur.

Channi only choice

While declaring Channi as the party’s CM face, Gandhi asserted repeatedly that it wasn’t he who had picked the chief ministerial candidate but the people of Punjab and a large section within the Congress.

Channi’s name had been suggested by a majority of the party’s 117 candidates in Punjab, workers as well as senior leaders in the Congress Working Committee, Gandhi said, adding that the clincher, of course, was the IVR-based opinion poll the party conducted through phone calls to ordinary Punjab voters.

The voters were asked to choose from three options — Channi, Sidhu or no CM face (the Congress traditionally doesn’t declare a CM face and hasn’t done so for the other poll-bound states, UP, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur). The voters chose Channi, Gandhi said, while praising other party leaders like Sidhu and former Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar as “diamonds of the party”.

पंजाब की जनता ने कांग्रेस पार्टी के CM चेहरे के रूप में चरणजीत सिंह चन्नी जी को चुना है।

मैं इससे सहमत हूँ।

हम मिलकर एक बेहतर और खुशहाल पंजाब बनाएँगे।#AawazPunjabDi pic.twitter.com/K13unY12Zy

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) February 6, 2022

The fact that the party indeed endorsed Channi based on internal consultations and external surveys can’t be denied. However, Congress insiders also claim that there were several hard-nosed electoral and political calculations that were factored in too — including the “strong possibility of our strategy backfiring… There is no Plan B, we have a Plan A and it has to work”.

With the Congress declaring it’s CM face, Punjab now knows the chief ministerial candidate of each of the three political parties that have a realistic chance of coming to power in the state that, for the first time, will witness a multi-cornered poll contest.

The Aam Aadmi Party has endorsed it’s Sangrur MP and candidate from Dhuri, Bhagwant Mann while the Congress’s traditional rival in Punjab, the Shiromani Akali Dal, has its CM face in Sukhbir Singh Badal, candidate from Jalalabad. The others in the poll contest are a motley group of farmer outfits as well as the BJP and its new allies —  Amarinder Singh’s Punjab Lok Congress and SS Dhindsa’s Shiromani Akali Dal (Sanyukt).

Dalits matter

Nearly a third of Punjab’s population — a little over 33 percent — comprises the Dalit community (including Hindu Dalits and Sikh Dalits). As many as 34 of the state’s 117 assembly seats are reserved for the Scheduled Castes — the Congress had won 21 of these in 2017. The community also holds the key to electoral results in at least a dozen other seats.

Despite this huge electoral bloc of the Dalits, the unwritten rule in Punjab’s electoral politics since Haryana was carved out of it in 1966 has been that the CM will be a Jat Sikh, a community that comprises roughly 28 percent of the electorate.

Of the 16 CMs Punjab has had since 1967, 14 have been Jat Sikhs — the exceptions to the rule have been Channi in the present and Giani Zail Singh, a backward caste, back in the 1970s; both from the Congress party.

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The Hindus, comprising over 30 percent of the population, make the third major voting bloc but have never had a CM from the community in Punjab.

Though Punjab’s Dalits have traditionally voted in large numbers for the Congress, the community’s voting pattern hasn’t been homogeneous across the state.

In several segments — particularly the Dalit-dominated Doaba region that comprises 23 assembly constituencies — the community has also voted for the Akalis. In the 2017 polls, a large shift of the community was seen in favour of the AAP, which won nine. SC-reserved seats in the 69-seat strong Malwa region.

Of the 21 SC seats the Congress had won in 2017, 10 were in Malwa and four in Doaba. The party had won all seven SC seats that fall in the Majha region. The Akalis picked up three SC seats and the BJP one (all in Doaba).

The politically and socially dominant Jat Sikhs, on the other hand, have usually voted en masse — and traditionally for the Akalis — except in segments where influential members of the community have contested as candidates of other parties.

The Hindu vote has typically split in different ways — going in substantial numbers to the Congress during Amarinder Singh’s rein while also to the Akalis and the BJP.

By first appointing Channi as the Punjab CM and now endorsing him for continuing in office if voted to power, it’s the Dalit vote that the Congress wishes to consolidate decisively in its favour.

I sincerely thank the Congress High Command and people of Punjab for bestowing their trust in me. As you have seen us work so hard in the last 111 days to take Punjab forward, I assure you to take Punjab and Punjabis on the path of progress with new zeal and dedication. pic.twitter.com/7jW1rBhEkj

— Charanjit Singh Channi (@CHARANJITCHANNI) February 6, 2022

The strategy was also evident when the party chose to field Channi as a candidate from Bhadaur in Barnala district aside from his traditional Chamkaur Sahib constituency. Bhadaur is a Dalit-reserved seat but the Congress, despite its strong performance in similarly reserved seats elsewhere in the state, has managed to wrest Bhadaur only twice since 1966 — once in 1967 and then in 2012.

In the 2017 polls, the Congress had finished third in Bhadaur while the AAP had swept the Barnala district. In Bhadaur, the AAP winner Pirmal Dhaula, had cornered a massive 44 percent vote-share.

In the adjoining SC-reserved Mehal Kalan seat too, the Congress had finished third while the AAP candidate was victorious. The Barnala district also falls within the Sangrur parliamentary constituency of AAP’s CM face, Bhagwant Mann. Mann is contesting the polls from Dhuri, an hour’s drive from Bhadaur.

By sending Channi to Bhadaur the Congress wants to bolster his image as the tallest Dalit leader in Punjab who can reverse the AAP’s inroads in the community and also neutralise any revival of the Akalis among Scheduled Castes owing to its alliance with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party for the upcoming polls.

With Dalits influencing poll outcomes in as many as 45 of Punjab’s 117 assembly seats (the majority mark in the state is 59), consolidating the community’s vote seems like a sound strategy for the Congress.

What about others?

However, this is also where a section of party leaders believe that Gandhi and the Congress could be making a “blunder”. “Our whole strategy is based on the assumption that Dalits will consolidate while the Jat Sikh and Hindu vote will split between Congress, AAP, Akali and BJP-PLC. What if things don’t go this way?” a Jat Sikh MLA from the party told The Federal.

Another party veteran said,”We have upset the Jat Sikhs by breaking their monopoly on the CMs post and because of the shabby treatment meted out to Amarinder and by now sidelining Sidhu too. The Hindus are unhappy with the way we treated Sunil Jakhar and Manish Tewari; many of their (Jakhar and Tewari) statements have caused identity-anxiety. Nationally, the BJP projects Congress as anti-Hindu, now in Punjab we are facing the same charge from some within our party as well as from AAP and Akalis. Social engineering is based on cohesion. Our social engineering has caused divisions.”

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Congress insiders admit that the party’s failure to handle Sidhu’s tantrums adroitly, the prolonged delay in dousing internal fires and the baggage of anti-incumbency from four-and-half years of Amarinder Singh’s tenure have collectively chipped away at the party’s victory prospects. Meanwhile, the AAP and the Akalis have been on a revival path.

Of Punjab’s three electoral regions, Malwa (constituting 69 seats) was a traditional Akali stronghold where the AAP had made in-roads in 2017 to win 18 of its 20 seats. With Mann as the AAP’s CM face, the party is hoping to consolidate its position further in Malwa as the Sangrur MP has pockets of influence in the region.

The border districts of the Majha region (25 assembly seats) typically vote en masse and the Akalis, with their old strongholds here, have been trying to regain ground at the Congress’s expense. By pitting their controversial but powerful leader, Bikram Majithia, against Sidhu in Amritsar East, the Akali Dal has tried to send a message of seriousness about its campaign in regaining control of Majha — and Punjab.

The Congress, meanwhile, is hopeful that its Dalit consolidation will not lead to counter-polarisation. The party also believes it’s populist promises coupled with a “ground swell of support” for Channi will eventually convince voters of the Jat Sikh and Hindu communities to “not waste their vote on other parties”, a party leader said.