Knives out in Cong as leaders want responsibility fixed for Tarn Taran debacle

Daggers are out in the state Congress  after the Tarn Taran bypoll result, with party leaders seeking to fix responsibility for the debacle.

In the recent memory, it is perhaps for the first time that any party candidate has lost security deposit.

The result came as huge embarrassment to the top state leadership already facing dissent over the selection of 27 new District Congress Committee (DCC) chiefs.

As the principal Opposition party in Punjab, the bypoll was an opportunity to reassert itself ahead of the 2027 Assembly elections and emerge as major challenge to ruling AAP.

But the party’s dismal show, amid the never-ending differences among its state top leaders, threatens to drift the voters away from it in the Assembly elections.

Party insiders said the wrong choice of the candidate and factionalism were responsible for the party’s decline.

Barring the 2024 Lok Sabha poll when the party won seven of the 13 seats in the state, the Congress has lost most bypolls, except the Barnala contest in 2024. However, state Congress president Amrinder Singh Raja defended the party performance.

“We had to face the rampant misuse of government machinery by the ruling party and gangster support for the SAD candidate. It has been a traditional Akali seat with exception of the Congress winning it in the 2017 polls,” he said. All-India Congress Committee (AICC) co-incharge for Punjab affairs Ravinder Dalvi said the party was introspecting the reasons for the dismal performance.

“The sad part of the bypoll was the issue of law and order. Gangster (violence) and employment (generation) took a backseat and emotive issues took the centre stage,” he added.The controversies triggered by back-to-back objectionable remarks by Warring annoyed voters in the Panthic seat with sizeable Dalit population, feel leaders.

Sources in the party said the critics of Warring after informal discussion on Friday preferred to adopt a wait-and-watch policy before deciding their future course of action in coming days.

A senior leader of the rival faction said after the Ludhiana bypoll debacle, Bharat Bhushan Ashu, Pargat Singh and Kushaldeep Dhillon quit as the state unit vice-presidents, while taking collective responsibility for the defeat. The same yardstick should apply to the Tarn Taran loss.