Chandigarh: More fissures appear in the INDIA bloc after Punjab’s ruling AAP slams the main Opposition party, Congress that remains opposed to it in the state.
Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann fired a salvo by sarcastically saying, “Ek thi Congress” on the first day of 2024 which will see the general elections in the country.
“Ek thi Congress” is the world’s shortest story, Mann told the media here.
At the same time, Congress paid him back in the same coin by saying, “Ek tha Joker.”
The Congress said there were common ideologies between the AAP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in seeking a “Congress-free India”.
Taking to X, Congress leader Pawan Khera responded to Mann’s assertion by saying, “How similar are the views of AAP and Modi ji! Both of them dream of a Congress-free India. Will eat both mouthfuls.” “By the way, the name of a Bhojpuri picture is ‘Ek tha Joker’. You must have seen it?” he added.
Joining the issue, Congress state leader Navjot Sidhu said his questions backed by facts and figures on the Delhi liquor scam have remained unanswered since Punjab Elections in 2022.
“Your silence is a deafening betrayal of the principles you once advocated,” he taunted AAP National Convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
Former state Congress chief Sidhu said the once vocal advocate for accountability has gone mute. “Is it a confession of inconvenient truths? The self-proclaimed RTI crusader has morphed into a master of evasion…Time for accountability and transparency,” he said, adding, “The Congress was, is and always will be there.”
In the backdrop of the AAP’s ‘Vikas Kranti Rally’ in Bathinda district that saw the presence of Mann and Kejriwal, the maverick leader Sidhu at a ‘Jittega Punjab, Jittegi Congress (Punjab will win, Congress will win)’ rally on the same day in the district took a dig at the government by saying a sand tipper which earlier sold for Rs 3,000 now costs Rs 21,000.
He slammed Mann and Kejriwal for promising Rs 20,000 crore revenue from sand mining and stated that “the government could collect a mere Rs 125 crore”.
He also took a jibe at the AAP leaders for not fulfilling the pre-poll promise of giving a Rs 1,000 allowance per month to every woman aged 18 and above.
However, knives are out within the party against Sidhu for his rallies, which rivals describe as “self-glorification events.”
Sidhu has also been slamming his party colleagues, including former Chief Minister Charanjit Channi, who was the chief ministerial candidate in the 2022 Assembly elections. Leaders believe Sidhu’s assertions also harmed the party in the 2022 Assembly elections.
The AAP had won 92 seats in Punjab — up from 20 in 2017 with its vote share rising to 42.4 percent. At a public meeting in Bathinda last month, Kejriwal appealed to the people to vote for the ruling AAP in all 13 seats in the Lok Sabha elections, hinting at no scope for seat sharing with its INDIA ally Congress.
He also asked the public, “Tell me one thing that the Akali Dal-BJP Government and the Congress Government have done in 75 years?”
The Congress had won eight Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2019, whereas the AAP won only a single seat.
The state unit of the Congress has been opposing the proposal of an alliance with the AAP.
Slamming the government after Arjuna Awardee Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Dalbir Singh was found dead under mysterious circumstances in Jalandhar, Leader of Opposition Partap Singh Bajwa said that on the very first day of this year it has been established that the government is inefficient in streamlining the law and order situation.
On the occasion of New Year 2024, Bajwa wished better sense would prevail over the government and it would start working for the betterment of the state.
“What the AAP Government in Punjab did in 2023 was exactly opposite of what it promised before elections in 2022. The government performed far from the expectations of the people of Punjab,” Bajwa told the media.
On the drug menace, Bajwa said that AAP’s senior leadership, including Mann and Kejriwal, had vowed to end the drug menace within four months of forming the government. However, on August 15, 2023, the Punjab Chief Minister sought another year to end the growing drug abuse in the state. Meanwhile, it has been more than four months since he made another pledge, and he has done nothing except conduct roadshows and cycle rallies.
“By the end of this financial year, the state’s debt will cross the Rs 3 lakh crore mark. Instead of raising revenue of the state from various sources like Rs 20,000 crore from sand mining and Rs 34,000 crore by ending corruption, the AAP Government kept borrowing from several financial agencies, including the Reserve Bank of India,” said Bajwa.
The Opposition leader said the law and order situation in Punjab remained poor in 2023 as well. Just like in 2022, gruesome crimes took place in 2023, too, and the AAP Government merely remained a mute spectator.
“I urge Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann, who also holds the Home portfolio to pull up his socks and chalk out an effective strategy to tackle organized crimes and growing gun violence in the state,” Bajwa added.
As the fighting between the AAP and the Congress escalates, hopes about their collective strength in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections, in Punjab diminish, say political observers.
The situation, they say, seems fluid for both the arch-rivals. The AAP and the Congress have never been on the same page in state politics, largely dominated by the Congress and the Akali Dal, since the former’s meteoric rise in the 2014 parliamentary polls.
Since the 21-month-old AAP Government, which trounced the traditional players that ruled the state for over seven decades, has an edge over all rivals, the Mann-led dispensation has sharp differences with all Opposition parties — the Congress, the BJP, and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).
Missing no opportunity, Chief Minister Mann is often accusing the BJP and the Congress of working together to topple the AAP Government.
In the present political scenario, the BJP, riding high on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity, is gung-ho about its prospects in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The Congress is yet to emerge from its own shadow, first to challenge the ruling AAP and then to counter the saffron brigade, which is largely banking on the sections deserting it, mainly Jat Sikhs, to strengthen its base.
Also, the state’s once-prominent regional outfit SAD, which marked its centennial in 2021, is facing its worst crisis “structurally, organisationally, and even in terms of ideological leadership.”
There is a mass exodus of leaders, even SAD veterans with grey, flowing beards. Now the SAD is returning to its “panthic” (Sikh religious) agenda to win back its core base of the Sikhs, particularly in rural belts, after the backlash to the 2015 sacrilege incidents and to its initial support to the Centre’s (now repealed) farm laws.
Apart from former Chief Minister Channi, the Vigilance Bureau has initiated probes against several Congress leaders, including former Deputy Chief Minister OP Soni, former ministers Bharat Bhushan Ashu, Sadhu Singh Dharamsot, Vijay Inder Singla, Brahm Mohindra, Sangat Singh Gilzian, Balbir Singh Sidhu, Gurpreet Singh Kangar, and Sham Sunder Arora.
Dismissing charges of “political vendetta”, Chief Minister Mann has been saying the government has waged war against corruption, and many leaders, including the AAP’s men, who indulged in corruption, have been put behind bars.
A seasoned journalist with over two decades of experience, Vishal writes on a wide range of subjects which include biodiversity, climate change and links between environment & development. He also covers politics and other developments in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. He lives in Chandigarh & Shimla.
