Punjab Congress and the politics of parallel power

Politics is often described as a battle between parties. Punjab Congress tells a different story. Its fiercest battles have often been fought within its own ranks.

From Darbara Singh and Giani Zail Singh to Rajinder Kaur Bhattal and Capt Amarinder Singh; from Capt Amarinder and Partap Singh Bajwa to Capt Amarinder and Navjot Singh Sidhu; from Sidhu and Charanjit Singh Channi to today’s visible fault lines between Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring and former Chief Minister Channi — the names have changed, but the pattern has remained strikingly familiar.

Every generation has inherited its own “versus”.

For nearly five decades, almost every major leadership transition in the Punjab Congress has been accompanied by a parallel power struggle. These rivalries were rarely just battles of ambition. Almost every “versus” revolved around three questions —— Who controlled the organisation? Who controlled the government? And who would eventually lead the party into the next election? Whenever these questions remained unsettled, factionalism flourished.

Punjab Congress has repeatedly followed a curious political cycle: every leader who rises by challenging the establishment eventually finds himself challenged by another ambitious successor. Capt Amarinder’s journey perhaps illustrates this better than anyone else’s. After the Congress lost the 2012 Assembly election, the high command appointed Partap Singh Bajwa as state unit president. The decision was organisational. Its consequences were political. For nearly three years, Bajwa headed the organisation while Capt Amarinder remained the Congress’s principal face on the ground. Rather than resolving the leadership question, Delhi chose to balance competing claims to authority — a formula that would repeatedly define its approach to Punjab.

The experiment yielded limited organisational stability. Recognising the need for a single face ahead of the 2017 Assembly election, the high command restored Capt Amarinder as the Punjab Congress president in late 2015. The decision paid immediate dividends. Under his leadership, the Congress returned to power in 2017 with 77 seats and nearly 38.5 percent of the vote —one of its strongest electoral performances in decades.

Yet the victory also reinforced a recurring paradox. In Punjab Congress, decisive electoral mandates have rarely guaranteed lasting organisational stability. Almost as soon as Capt Amarinder consolidated his authority, another rival centre of influence began to emerge. The Capt Amarinder-Navjot Sidhu confrontation was not merely another personality clash; it exposed the limitations of the Congress high command’s long-standing strategy of accommodating competing leaders instead of settling the leadership question. Eventually, Sidhu was appointed Punjab Congress president despite Capt Amarinder’s reservations. The decision was projected as a political compromise. In reality, it formalised two competing centres of authority within the same party.

The consequences were swift. Capt Amarinder resigned as Chief Minister in September 2021, bringing to an end one of the most consequential leadership crisis in Punjab Congress. The Congress then made a bold political gamble by appointing Channi, Punjab’s first Dalit Chief Minister, hoping to reshape the party’s social coalition before the Assembly election. Instead, the party entered another phase of uncertainty. Within weeks, Sidhu and Channi were publicly at odds over administrative appointments and governance, signalling that replacing one leader had not resolved the underlying conflict.

That has been the enduring paradox of Punjab Congress. Leadership changes have repeatedly altered the protagonists, but seldom the script. Every attempt to settle one power struggle has eventually produced another, suggesting that the party’s recurring “versus” is less a clash of individuals than a symptom of an unresolved organisational culture.

Ahead of the ensuing state assembly election, visible differences between Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring and former Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi have once again shifted attention from the party’s campaign to its internal equations.  The pattern is difficult to ignore. Time and again, the Congress has postponed settling leadership questions in the hope that competing ambitions could coexist. In Punjab, however, unresolved succession has rarely produced unity; more often, it has prolonged uncertainty. Leadership contests do not remain confined to the top. They inevitably permeate the organisation. District units align with rival camps, candidate selection becomes contentious, campaign messaging loses coherence and the cadre begins responding to personalities rather than the organisation. The opposition, meanwhile, gains valuable political space. Punjab’s recent electoral history illustrates the cost of this drift. The Congress collapsed to 18 seats with around 23 percent vote share in 2022, while the Aam Aadmi Party swept the election with 92 seats. No electoral defeat can ever be attributed to one factor alone. Anti-incumbency, governance issues, changing political expectations, and the emergence of AAP all contributed to the outcome. But it is equally difficult to ignore that the Congress entered the 2022 election after spending months fighting itself.

The recurring pattern also raises a larger institutional question. For decades, the Congress high command has attempted to manage Punjab through political accommodation, committees, and organisational balancing. Punjab’s politics, however, has rarely responded to calibrated compromises. It has traditionally revolved around clear leadership, strong regional identities, and leaders with independent political constituencies.

That disconnect has repeatedly produced an uneasy compromise: Delhi seeks balance, while Punjab demands clarity. The result has often been an unresolved succession rather than a settled leadership. As Punjab heads towards another Assembly election, the Congress faces a challenge that is bigger than choosing its next chief ministerial face or settling another internal dispute.

Punjab Congress has never lacked leaders. It has produced some of the state’s tallest political figures. But it has repeatedly struggled to ensure smooth leadership transitions. Instead of one accepted leader, the party has often found itself divided between rival camps, each claiming to represent the real Congress. For any political party, healthy competition among leaders is natural. The problem begins when that competition overshadows the organisation itself. When leaders spend more time strengthening their own camps than strengthening the party, elections become harder to fight and victories become harder to sustain.

The writer is Chief Reporter with The Pioneer, Chandigarh; Views presented are personal.