The culmination of internal strife into defeat for the Congress party in Punjab during the recently-concluded parliamentary polls may still be an issue of debate, but the State Congress chief Partap Singh Bajwa’s attempts to justify the rout by blaming wrangling, for it has indeed resulted in a clash.
Bajwa’s detractors, who have been demanding his resignation for his failure to take advantage of anti-incumbency factor against the ruling coalition, have expressed their displeasure with his “defense”.
They are of the view that Bajwa, in an apparent attempt to save his skin, is laying blame of the party’s poor performance in the State to the infighting, and the legislators.
In the pool of party leaders and legislators demanding Bajwa’s resignation “on moral grounds”, few more joined on Tuesday.
A total of 14 MlAs, besides party’s district presidents, have asked Bajwa to “own moral responsibility and follow into the footsteps of the Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the vice president Rahul Gandhi,
who took responsibility and offered to quit”.
Pointing that Bajwa’s predecessor Capt Amarinder Singh also offered to resign after party’s resounding defeat in 2012 assembly polls, the party leaders reminded the State Congress president of the party’s tradition where the “leader takes the responsibility and offers to quit.”
They went on to question Bajwa over his defense over the party’s “catastrophic poll debacle” in the state under his leadership.
leaving it all on the party high command to decide his fate in the party, Bajwa has blamed it on the infighting that led to defeat of party candidates in the state — a submission not finding favour with his detractors. They, on the other hand, questioned Bajwa, whether he would have used similar arguments if the party had fared better in the polls.
Armed with the party leaders’ performance during the election period, Bajwa is expected to meet party’s top brass in Delhi soon. It is believed that Bajwa would also bring into the notice of party high command the “indisciplined act” by some of the party MlAs who ignored their own constituencies, and focused on others — clearly indicating at several legislators who campaigned for Capt Amarinder in Amritsar.
Several MlAs, including Barnala MlA Kewal Singh Dhillon, Bhadaur MlA Mohd Sadique, Mehal Kalan MlA Harchand Kaur, Dhuri MlA Arvind Khanna, Kapurthala MlA Rana Gurjit, among others, did not campaigned for the party candidates in their constituencies, as some preferred to stay away, others campaigned for party candidates in other segments.
The political analysts believed that absence of Congress MlAs from sitting MP Vijay Inder Singla’s campaign has cost confiscation of his security deposits besides finishing third in Sangrur, next to the SAD and Aam Aadmi Party.
The leaders asked Bajwa how he could blame others, “when he had lost from his family borough of Qadian which was represented by his wife Charanjeet Kaur Bajwa”.
They pointed out that Congress’ vote share has come down to 32 from 41 per cent in 2012. “Besides, the Congress, having maximum number of MPs earlier, has been reduced to the third spot behind AAP and the lead in the assembly segments has come down from 46 to 29,” they added.
Referring to Bajwa’s act of seeking votes as a prospective Chief Minister of Punjab, they said that despite that, he was rejected by the people even in all the nine assembly segments of Gurdaspur.
“While AAP was wiped out from all over India, thanks to Bajwa’s poor leadership it flourished in Punjab as he failed to capitalize on the strong anti-incumbency sentiment prevailing against the ruling Akali-BJP government in the state,” added the Congress leaders.