Congress Needs to Tame Disgruntled Navjot Sidhu in Punjab
Congress Needs to Tame Disgruntled Navjot Sidhu in Punjab
Although Sidhu keeps saying that he wants Punjab to win, his one and only ambition is to become the CM of Punjab by hook or by crook.
By Rakesh Raman
A loudmouth Congress leader in Punjab Navjot Singh Sidhu is once again hell-bent to completely destroy his party which is already on the deathbed in the state as well as in the national political arena.
With his anti-Congress rhetoric, Sidhu was the main culprit who was responsible for Congress’s defeat in the Punjab Assembly election of 2022. As Sidhu does not enjoy any popularity in Punjab, he himself also could not win the election.
His open revolt against the senior Congress leaders – particularly the then Punjab chief minister (CM) Amarinder Singh – led to the victory of the fledgling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the state.
Instead of learning from his repeated mistakes, Sidhu has again started creating ruckus in Punjab just a few months before the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
A few days ago – on December 17 – Sidhu held a separate rally in Bathinda without any consent from senior leadership and without any participation from the state Congress leaders.
Irked by Sidhu’s divisive action, top Congress leader Partap Singh Bajwa – who is the leader of opposition in the Punjab Assembly – asked Sidhu to participate in the joint party events instead of creating his own stage.
In such isolated rallies, Sidhu often speaks against Punjab Congress leaders with veiled references. He is so cunning that he does not criticize his colleagues by name.
But he spews venom against them in such a way that you can easily know the name of the person against whom he talks. In his monotonous and meaningless speeches, Sidhu levels baseless allegations on other Congress leaders.
Strangely, however, Sidhu does not speak openly against his AAP opponent Bhagwant Mann who is the CM of Punjab. Rather, Sidhu calls him his “younger brother” (or ਛੋਟਾ ਭਰਾ in Punjabi) because both Bhagwant Mann and Sidhu used to work in cheap and vulgar comedy shows on TV.
As Sidhu keeps changing political parties, the possibility cannot be ruled out that he is trying to join AAP as Congress has virtually discarded him, while he is still an ordinary member of the dying party.
Although Sidhu keeps saying that he wants Punjab to win, his one and only ambition is to become the CM of Punjab by hook or by crook.
He wants to grab the top leadership position in the state only by showing his sycophancy toward national Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi whose picture he has pasted on his Twitter profile.
As a naive politician, Sidhu keeps counting the problems in the state, but he does not have any solution to overcome those problems. In fact, like at the national level, almost all the Congress leaders in Punjab are highly incompetent and lazy.
They have never provided an alternative narrative to the people who are suffering in the Bhagwant Mann government. Today, Punjab is facing extreme political corruption, lawlessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mafia culture, youth exodus, religious fundamentalism, debt crisis, and state oppression.
With multiple protests by different sections of society, the state of nearly 30 million people is witnessing a situation of complete unrest while Bhagwant Mann – who is working as a puppet of AAP politicians including Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi – has completely failed in running the government.
There are two other political outfits: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in Punjab. But they are almost extinct. That is why Bhagwant Mann is running the government in a free-wheeling manner without any accountability.
In such a situation, Congress needs to completely revamp its political structure in Punjab and it will be good if Sidhu is either completely tamed or thrown out of the party for his anti-party activities.
Moreover, Congress needs to deploy a team of central observers who can speak Punjabi fluently and understand the problems of people so that Congress could chalk out a definite strategy for its revival in the state.
By Rakesh Raman, who is a national award-winning journalist and social activist. He is the founder of the humanitarian organization RMN Foundation which is working in diverse areas to help the disadvantaged and distressed people in the society. He has also launched the “Power Play: Lok Sabha Election 2024 in India” editorial section to cover the news, events, and other developments related to the 2024 election.
