Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, June 4: In a virtual exodus from the Congress, the grand old party which was routed in the recent state Assembly elections in the hands of the Aam Aadmi Party, a number of senior party leaders including four former ministers on Saturday switched their allegiance to the BJP. Along with them, two former MLAs of the Shiromani Akali Dal also joined the BJP giving the saffron party a major boost considering its poor performance in the Assembly elections.
Apparently guided by the former state Congress chief Sunil Jakhar, who after waiting in the wings for several months since he was replaced by Navjot Singh Sidhu last year crossed over to the BJP recently, four former Congress ministers bade goodbye to the Congress and wore saffron scarfs. The former ministers to join the BJP included Raj Kumar Verka, Balbir Singh Sidhu, Sunder Sham Arora and Gurpreet Singh Kangar.
Former Congress MLA from Barnala, Kewal Dhillon, and former Shiromani Akali Dal MLAs Sarup Chand Singla and Mohinder Kaur Josh, too, joined the BJP. Union Ministers Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and Som Parkash, state unit chief Ashwani Sharma, and senior party leaders Dushyant Gautam, Tarun Chugh, Sunil Jakhar and Manjinder Singh Sirsa welcomed them.
Balbir Sidhu, a three-time MLA from Mohali, was the Health Minister in the previous Congress government while Gurpreet Kangar, who is also a three-time MLA from Rampura Phul, was the Revenue Minister. Verka, a prominent Dalit leader from Majha region, is a three-time legislator and was the Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment and Minorities in the previous government while Sunder Sham Arora, a former MLA from Hoshiarpur, was the Industry and Commerce Minister in the previous Congress government.
All the four leaders lost the 2022 state assembly polls. The Union Home Minister Amit Shah who was in Chandigarh on Saturday, met state party leaders. He then went to Haryana’s Panchkula and inaugurated the Khelo India Youth Games.
Former Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, who left the Congress and formed his own party Punjab Lok Congress, has held the Gandhis responsible for the rout of the party in the assembly elections earlier this year. Amarinder Singh had claimed that the Congress was “comfortably placed” in Punjab before he was unseated as Chief Minister. He has slammed the Congress Working Committee for trying to put the blame for the defeat in Punjab on him instead of “gracefully admitting” their “own blunders”.
The Congress, however, reacted to the exodus in the same style the party had been commenting on all those who cross over to other parties. The Punjab State Congress chief Amrinder Singh Raja Warring termed the switchovers a “blessing in disguise”. He said the saffron party had taken “trash” into its fold and would realise in the next elections what a “tohfa” (gift) it had accepted. He said the Congress suffered a political debacle thanks to such leaders. The party could win only 18 seats in the 117-member Assembly in the February 20 elections. Warring was one of the winners.
State Congress working president Kuljit Singh Nagra said in a video message, “At a time when there was a big tragedy in Punjab (the killing of singer Sidhu Moosewala) and when there was a need to share Punjabis’ grief with Amit Shah, leaders were coerced to join the BJP.”
“The Congress leaders who are joining the BJP”, I feel, “are those who did wrong things and Captain Amarinder Singh knows in which all wrongdoings they were involved,” he further said in the video. Nagra also alleged that former chief minister was threatening to reveal their wrongdoings if they refused to join the BJP. A “true Congressman who loves Punjab” would not join the BJP, he added.
An aide to Jakhar said family members of four-time Congress MLA Amrik Singh Dhillon, who contested as an independent this year after being denied a ticket, also joined the saffron party. Dhillon is not keeping well.
Verka had in a recent video hit out at the party high command for failing to set its house in order and address factionalism.
Jakhar and Sirsa are learnt to have played a key role in the switchovers, having recently been in constant touch with the turncoats, according to sources.
Kewal Dhillon, a former MLA from Barnala who was expelled from the Congress for alleged anti-party activities, also joined the BJP. Former MLA Sarup Chand Singla, who quit the SAD in March this year, also joined the saffron party.
With this, at least three senior politicians from the Malwa region—Kangar, a former MLA from Rampura Phul; Singla, a former MLA from Bathinda; and Sidhu, a former MLA from Mohali—switched over to the BJP.
Arora, a former MLA from Hoshiarpur, hails from the Doaba region and Verka, a former MLA from Amritsar West, is from the Majha region. While Verka is a Dalit leader, Singla and Arora were Hindu faces of the Congress in the Sikh-majority state and Sidhu and Kangar its Jat Sikh faces.
