congress: Post-debacle: Sidhu gets active as Punjab Congress awaits its leader | India News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: A demonstration by Congress workers in Chandigarh to protest against price rise and the Centre’s policies unintentionally brought to the fore the differences within the party which was recently swept aside in the assembly elections.
According to reports, Congress’s former state unit chief Navjot Singh Sidhu made a disparaging remark towards unnamed leaders while addressing the gathering on the importance of promoting those with clean image.
However, Punjab Youth Congress chief Barinder Singh Dhillon questioned Sidhu why such persons could not be named. Else it mere drama, he reportedly said.

If Congress wanted to make a point through the protest, the only message it sent across was the disorganised state of its Punjab unit.
“I just said that during protest, issues related to protests should be taken up and that names of people should be enunciated clearly if the leader wanted to do so… There’s no factionalism in the party and everything is fine,” Dhillon was quoted by newsagency ANI as saying.

However, it is these differences between its leaders that cost Congress dearly in the elections. The same differences now make it difficult for the party’s national leadership to name a new leader.
Channi silent, Sidhu gets active
Sidhu and former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi were the two leaders which Congress expected would take it to victory in the Punjab polls. However, there were repeated incidents which showed differences between the two.
Post the defeat, Channi has preferred to lie low. Sidhu, on the other hand, has been quite active in raising issues for the party, now in opposition. Sidhu has attacked the AAP government on several issues, be it law and order, sacrilege or drugs.

However, after getting routed with him as the state chief, can Congress give the cricketer-turned-politician another chance?
AAP’s promises
The AAP government under Bhagwant Mann is sitting pretty, with a brute majority of 92 in the 117-member assembly. Yet, people of the state also expect it to fulfil many of its key promises. Cheap power, jobs and a monthly stipend to every woman in the state are all promises which will test Punjab’s already precarious finances.
An effective opposition can always get back in the reckoning. However, given its present rudderless situation in the state, Congress has to be vary of shrinking further.
Other leaders
Congress is not short of leaders in Punjab. Apart from Channi and Sidhu (both incidentally lost their assembly seats) there are others such as Sunil Jakhar, Ravneet Singh Bittu, Manish Tewari, Amrinder Singh Raja Warring and Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa.
However, many leaders have expressed dissatisfaction with the party’s functioning in the recent past. Bittu was recently in the news for his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
As the party looks to appoint a new state chief, ensuring that factionalism does not raise its head is going to be a tricky task.