Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Sept 24: It is turning out to be a throne of thorns for the newly-appointed Punjab chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi who has to counter political moves at every corner. Tense infighting within the is on in appointments for every post, even for advocate general or the state director general of police and the state’s first Dalit Sikh chief minister is unlikely to get a free hand in running the government before the state go to the polls early next year.
Besides the challenge of the deposed chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh who is acting within the party as the principal opposition posing as bigger than the opposition parties, group rivalries has not allowed even the party high command to finalise Channi’s cabinet so far.
Within hours of Channi returning to Chandigarh from Delhi following detailed discussions over the formation of his cabinet, he was summoned back to Delhi on Friday and told not to make public the list of cabinet ministers apparently because the high command was giving a second thought over its formation due to intense infighting within the party.
Except appointing two deputy chief ministers with Channi, the Congress high command is unable to finalise other appointments needed for the smooth functioning of the government particularly when only a few months are left before the Assembly elections. It is learnt that the Punjab state Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu, the bête noir of Captain Amarinder Singh, is also expected in Delhi to participate in the discussion over cabinet formation.
Channi was called to Delhi on Thursday where he held two meetings — the first with senior leader K C Venugopal, general secretary in-charge Harish Rawat, Harish Chaudhary and Ajay Maken and the second with Rahul Gandhi, which lasted till 2 am.
The move to call Channi to Delhi came after Rahul met former PPCC chief Sunil Jakhar for 45 minutes. The party has been trying to impress upon Jakhar to accept a role in the Cabinet but he has been declining. An emissary of Gandhi had met Jakhar on Thursday before his meeting. Jakhar was one of the strong favourites to succeed Amarinder Singh before Channi piped him at the last post.
Sources privy to the meeting said Rahul and Jakhar discussed how to strengthen Congress in Punjab before 2022. They also discussed Jakhar’s role in the government as well as the party organisation.
Before this development, the Congress in Punjab was waiting for the list of Cabinet ministers as the CM is learnt to have conveyed to his colleagues that the list was finalised but was awaiting clearance from the Congress national president Sonia Gandhi.
“The party leaders were shying away from making the list public as there were already several protests. For instance, Manpreet Singh Badal has been vehemently opposing Amrinder Singh Raja Warring’s inclusion. There have been more aspirants like Gurkirat Kotli and Navtej Singh Cheema. We do not know how all aspirants will be included,” a party leader said.
While the party is retaining most of the ministers from Amarinder’s cabinet, it has to induct a few new faces, but is finding it difficult to make a decision. The Congress high command apparently is worry of taking a bold step like the BJP in Gujarat where the party sent packing home each of the 33 ministers in the Vijay Rupani cabinet and inducted 24 new faces to run the Bhupendra Patel government.
The party sources admitted that not only in the formation of the cabinet, the tug of war between Punjab leaders is on even over the appointments of advocate general, DGP and other top posts forcing the high command to intervene in every small appointments. Rahul Gandhi is leant to have vetoed appointing Deepinder Singh Patwalia as the Advocate General after a few party leaders informed the high command that the choice of Sidhu for the AG’s post was allegedly having “BJP leanings.” Gandhi then asked Channi to appoint someone else, the sources said. The government is now planning to appoint Anmol Rattan Singh Sidhu as the next AG. The formal order is, however, awaited apparently because Sidhu and former DGP Mohd Mustafa who were backing Patwalia are not inclined for Anmol Rattan.
There is no consensus on the issue of the next DGP too. While Siddharth Chattopadhyay was tipped to be the next DGP, there is still no formal order as several party leaders opposed his appointment.