Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Sept 23: While the BJP government in the prime minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat was completely shaken up without much of a protest, the process has created turmoil for the Congress in Punjab, strong dissidence in Chhattisgarh and uncertainty in Rajasthan.
In one stroke, the BJP high command not only replaced the chief minister Vijay Rupani with a “Patidar” leader Bhupendra Patel, it also sent home packing all the 33 ministers in the Rupani cabinet and constituted a 24-member cabinet under Patel with all new, fresh and inexperienced faces, many of whom had not even run a borough municipality or a village panchayat.
The swearing-in of the new cabinet had to be postponed by a day because of the murmur of protest from the senior cabinet ministers but all these died down overnight when told that was the way Modi and the union home minister Amit Shah had decided for Gujarat. They were given the example of Rupani who quietly tendered his resignation without raising a question on the high command’s decision. “In BJP, you can not oppose a decision taken by the Modi-Shah duo, otherwise that till be the end of your political career,” a senior BJP leader had commented.
Taking a cue from Gujarat, the Congress planned a similar measure to contain year-long dissidence in the party-run government. In an overnight coup, the chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh was ordered to go home and was replaced by a dark horse, Charanjit Singh Channi, the first Dalit Sikh, as the chief minister silencing both the Akali-BSP combine and the BJP.
But instead of solving the problem, the move seems to have created more turmoil for the party. The 79-year old Amarinder Singh, despite enjoying the office of the chief minister for long nine and half years, is still insatiate and has risen in revolt against the party high command. Threatening to resign from the party for being told to resign, Singh said he had kept “all the future options open” and has even called the former party president Rahul Gandhi and the party in-charge of UP Priyanka Gandhi, as “immature and inexperienced.”
Singh has publicly made statements that he would put up a “strong candidate” against the party state president Navjot Singh Sidhu, his sworn enemy, in the coming elections to the state Assembly to “stop him” from becoming the Punjab chief minister. Singh’s statement not only give indication that he was ready to join hands with some of the opposition parties, it has also given credence to the opposition criticism of the Congress that setting up a Dalit Sikh as the chief minister was only a “façade” and the real intention of the party was to anoint Sidhu as the chief minister if the party managed to retain majority in the next year’s assembly elections.
The Congress move in Punjab has rekindled hopes among the dissidence in the two other Congress-ruled states Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan where the demands for change of leadership had been pending for a long time and the Congress high command so far unable to contain the dissidence.
An uncertainty over change of guard in Chhattisgarh continues, supporters of Health Minister T.S. Singh Deo complained of intimidation by police following an FIR against Congress secretary Pankaj Singh for allegedly manhandling a paramedic at the Chhattisgarh Institute of Medical Sciences.
Singh Deo, who has staked claim for the Chief Minister’s post as part of a 2018 arrangement of rotational tenure that he claims was agreed upon between him and Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel in the presence of Rahul Gandhi, has been in Delhi since Monday. He has said it is a personal visit. So far, he has not met Rahul Gandhi or any other functionary at the party headquarters, to avoid speculation of renewed efforts by him to lobby for the post. He is leaving for Raipur on Friday.
Singh Deo had raised the issue with the party high command last month pointing out that Baghels’s two and half year term had been completed and it was now his turn to head the government. But Baghel refused to concede and denied that there was any such agreement of rotational chief ministership was reached with Singh Deo. Though Rahul Gandhi was learnt to be favouring replacing Baghel with Singh Deo, the chief minister remained adamant claiming that he enjoyed the majority support of the Congress MLAs.
After returning to Raipur, Baghel was alleged to have been trying to undermine the status of Singh Deo. The tension between the two sides in the State has refused to subside. Singh Deo’s supporters held a demonstration outside the Kotwali police station in Bilaspur on Wednesday to protest against the FIR. Singh himself has described it as an act of revenge. He claimed that he was only intervening because the hospital staff refused to conduct an MRI on a poor patient. The FIR was also filed days after the incident, the supporters claimed.
The Bilaspur police booked Singh based on a CCTV footage retrieved from the hospital. Bilaspur MLA Shailesh Pandey said the action was unfortunate and it had been taken only because Singh was a supporter of Singh Deo. “This FIR is just the tip of the iceberg, the police have been told to dig up dirt on everyone who is supporting Singh Deo. Discreet investigation are also on against Singh Deo himself,” a Congress leader close to the health minister said.
In Rajasthan, an outburst of dissidence is only waiting to happen as the party high command for long had kept a solution to the imbroglio pending. The former deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot, who had rebelled against the chief minister Ashok Gehlot and at one stage was almost ready to cross over to the BJP along with his about two dozen MLAs, has been promised of a solution but none was forthcoming for more than a year now. The disquiet in the Rajasthan Congress is palpable even as Gehlot is refusing to accommodate Pilot in any manner.
Entangled in the Punjab turmoil and the rift in Chhattisgarh, the party high command has no time to pay attention towards Rajasthan, but if the Pilot camp continued to be cold-shouldered by Gehlot, a division within the Congress legislature party may not be far away.
