Captain prevails

Capt Amarinder Singh has snatched the job of Punjab Congress president from a reluctant national leadership. Odds were heavily against him. The party had lost two consecutive assembly polls under him. He had challenged the leadership of Rahul Gandhi and his appointee, Partap Singh Bajwa. Age did not favour him and there was talk in the Congress of bringing in fresh blood. He and his family members face charges of corruption and money laundering. There were reports of his leaving the Congress to float a new party. The Congress vice-president consulted the party MLAs and district presidents from Punjab and, after much dithering, replaced the lacklustre and tactless Bajwa with the bold, brash and gutsy Captain. 

The Captain had to his credit a crucial 2014 Lok Sabha win against a BJP stalwart, while Bajwa lost to a non-resident Punjabi actor. Punjabis love Amarinder Singh’s bold, no-nonsense style. The way he, as Chief Minister, unilaterally terminated Punjab’s water treaty with the neighbouring states annoying his party’s national leadership earned him Punjabi farmers’ goodwill. Now, will he do in Punjab what Virbhadra Singh did in Himachal — get the badly bruised Congress a morale-lifting victory? That is not easy. The faction-ridden Congress is its own enemy. The latest caste-based revamp denies a meaningful role to its three key leaders: Bajwa, Sunil Jakhar and Rajinder Kaur Bhattal. Of those appointed Ambika Soni lacks mass appeal, Lal Singh and Sadhu Singh have got the posts due to their caste and Ravneet Bittu is a Rahul protégé. The onus of victory, therefore, is heavily on the Captain. His biggest challenge will be to play the 2017 match as a team. He may not face open defiance but his known inaccessibility and dependence on flattering cronies often put off even his admirers. 

The Congress lost the last assembly election partly because Manpreet Badal’s PPP split the anti-Akali votes. There is a possibility of AAP doing it in 2017. However, this time anti-Badal sentiment is so strong and widespread that it would require the Congress and AAP to make tremendous self-destructive efforts to lose the election.