The campaign for the Punjab Assembly election ends Friday evening. But the ruling Congress party is reported to be struggling to put out its manifesto for the Punjab election. The Congress’s manifesto declaration is understood to be stuck in the quadrangle of the big-four Punjab Congress president Navjot Singh Sidhu, Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi, campaign committee head Sunil Jakhar and manifesto committee chairman Partap Singh Bajwa.
The Punjab Congress’s election manifesto story began on January 11, when the party set up a 25-member manifesto committee and a 31-member campaign committee. Back then, Sidhu was leading the Congress’s charge in the assembly election.
Two weeks later, on January 25, Sidhu held a meeting with Bajwa, a Rajya Sabha MP, and Congress spokesperson Jaiveer Singh in Jalandhar over the party’s manifesto for the Punjab election. Sidhu presented his 13-point Punjab Model and addressed the media along with Bajwa and Singh in Jalandhar.
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Bajwa, the manifesto committee head, announced that Sidhu’s Punjab Model would be part of the Congress’s manifesto for Punjab. Among other things, Sidhu’s Punjab Model of governance promised a Jitega Punjab Commission apparently a body that could be a super-cabinet with a principal policy advisory role to advise each department of the government and party MLAs.
As the last day of the election campaign in Punjab began Friday morning, the Congress’s manifesto was still missing. In his media interactions, Partap Singh Bajwa, once an arch-rival of Captain Amarinder Singh, has said he can’t spare time to visit Chandigarh to release the manifesto despite having it scheduled a couple of times as he is busy campaigning in his constituency , Qadian.
Bajwa, considered to be in the Sidhu camp of the Punjab Congress, has had a long battle of one upmanship in the Punjab Congress with Amarinder Singh, who got the better of his rival during the 2017 Punjab election. Sidhu and Bajwa later became natural allies when the Congress forced Amarinder Singh to step down as chief minister.
The other vortex of the Punjab Congress quadrangle, Sunil Jakhar, is a former close aide of Captain Amarinder Singh, who had once declared that he could be the first Hindu chief minister in Punjab.
Jakhar heads the campaign committee but is sulking over a range of issues within the Congress. One of them is denial of a chief ministerial candidature for being a Punjabi Hindu, not a Sikh. He recently created a flutter with his statement. Thereafter, he has largely stayed mum in the Punjab election.
His assertion was that despite Punjab Congress MLAs backing him as CM candidate, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi chose Channi as chief minister. The same decision also disrupted Sidhu’s Punjab Model campaign.
On February 6, Rahul Gandhi announced Channi won the tele-voting poll for Congress’s CM candidate in Punjab.
After Sidhu’s chief ministerial ambition was shelved by Congress’s de facto boss Rahul Gandhi, Bajwa, just like Sidhu, confined himself to the boundaries of his constituency.
With the Congress’s manifesto release making no headway, Sidhu released his Punjab Model on social media on February 12.
While Sidhu muted his Punjab model, Channi went vocal about his own poll-promise card dotted with a number of freebies. Rs 1,100 per month for women, Rs 3 per unit electricity, sand rate to be fixed at Rs 4 per cubic feet, monthly cable TV rate to be fixed at Rs 100, 1 lakh jobs within a year of government formation, free mobile data for Students and eight LPG cylinders free of cost in a year are among the promises Channi has made to Punjabi voters. Hey, too, didn’t wait for an official manifesto.
The Congress technically has time to release its manifesto by 5 pm on Friday. The Election Commission in 2019 amended the rule to ban the release of election manifestos during the silence period that begins two days ahead of the polling.
Punjab goes to the polls on February 20 for all 117 seats. Votes will be counted on March 10.
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