Punjab Congress has come under pressure to declare its chief ministerial candidate after arch-rival Aam Aadmi Party declared comedian-turned-politician Bhagwant Mann as its CM candidate. In Congress’ scheme of things, the incumbent is considered the CM candidate usually. However, Charanjit Singh Channi’s takeover has been marred by his political tussle with Punjab Congress president Navjot Singh Sidhu and the party has not cleared the air on the matter.
AAP, seen as the principal challenger to the ruling Congress, settled its leadership question as party convenor Arvind Kejriwal declared Sangrur MP Bhagwant Mann as its CM face. AAP lampooned the Congress over its in-fighting on the leadership issue. Using its official Twitter handle, AAP used a popular Bollywood song to show how the people of Punjab were confused following the tussle between Sidhu and Channi.
Mann’s projection is seen as correcting a mistake committed in 2017 assembly elections, which may have cost AAP the Punjab polls. A big section in AAP were of the opinion that the party’s reluctance to declare Mann as the chief ministerial face left the leadership question open. At the same time, Amarinder Singh had forced the Congress to declare that the elections were fought under his leadership. Without a CM face, the voters feared AAP could ‘parachute’ an outsider to run the state.
Forty-year-old Mann is a two-term MP from the electorally significant Malwa region. The decision to choose him was taken after Kejriwal opened party phone lines and asked people to call in with their choice of CM candidate. On Tuesday, he said that 93% respondents overwhelmingly favoured Mann. With this ‘democratic process’, Kejriwal signalled the importance of Malwa in AAP’s scheme of things. In 117-member Punjab assembly, 69 seats are from Malwa region, 25 from Majha (the border belt of Punjab) and the fertile Doaba has 23 seats. The oft-repeated line in Punjab is ‘whoever wins Malwa, wins Punjab’. While AAP had performed well in Malwa, Congress under Captain Amarinder Singh had performed well across the three regions.
A video released by Congress could provide a fig leaf to the party which has always toed the line that elections were fought under the sitting chief minister. The video features popular actor Sonu Sood asking “Who should be CM?” As visuals of Channi play, Sood explains that a CM should be a backbencher who deserves the job. Congress is not in a position to replace its first Dalit chief minister in Punjab even though Sidhu has been pressuring the high command to declare him the CM candidate.
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