Former Punjab Chief Minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Amarinder Singh has publicly expressed his displeasure over the appointment of his once close friend, Kewal Singh Dhillon, as the state unit president of the party. During a series of interviews with various news organisations he expressed his disappointment that he was not consulted over such an important appointment despite having been sixty years in politics.
Singh is right. The central BJP leadership should have consulted him about this appointment. The BJP is indeed at fault for not having taken anyone into confidence before Dhillon’s appointment. Not only Amarinder, many other BJP leaders in Punjab are also not happy with the appointment. They agree with his observation that there were much better leaders in the state for the job.
Amarinder sought to draw parallels with his old party, the Congress. He claimed that there was a practice of consultation on everything in the Congress. He did not say it, but from his conversations it sounded like he was missing the Congress. He even cited some examples that even while being in the BJP, he had received a telephone call from Rahul Gandhi, on his birthday. He had also received a condolence message from Gandhi, over the death of his cousin Raja Randhir Singh, whom Amarinder was very close to. But nobody from the BJP called or condoled him.
Momentary and sporadic exceptions aside, Amarinder's nostalgia about the Congress remains completely misplaced. While there are a number of Congress leaders, who have left the party or are still in the Congress, who will contradict Amarinder anytime on his claims of the “culture of consultation” in the grand old party, he (Amarinder), himself was the biggest victim of the one-sided decision, so characteristic of the Congress, imposed on him that eventually led to his ungraceful exit from the party.
So much so, when the Congress decided to convene the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting to remove him, he was not even informed about it. He was told about it by one of the party MPs from Punjab, as he had no idea or intimation. So much about the Congress’ culture of consultation, which he seems to miss today, while being in the BJP!
While in case of the state BJP unit president’s appointment Amarinder did not have any direct stakes and also Dhillon would always be acceptable to him, given his old and long-time relationship with him, the Congress ‘thrust’ Navjot Singh Sidhu as the Punjab Congress president in 2021, much against his will and wishes. Despite strong resistance put up by him against Sidhu’s appointment, which no doubt proved to be the undoing for the Congress, the party high command did not care about Amarinder’s opinion. It pushed through Sidhu’s appointment as the state president. Amarinder was right in opposing it as the Congress later realised that it had committed a fatal blunder.
Eventually Amarinder resigned from the Congress, formed his own party, the Punjab Lok Congress contested unsuccessfully the 2022 elections, and later merged the party with the BJP. Today he remains in the BJP and is the member of its National Executive, apex decision-making body of the party.
While there are umpteen examples in the Congress where the leaders were left with no option but to leave the party, like Amarinder himself, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s is the most quoted and prominent one. He has said it on record how he was treated by the senior leadership and even when he managed to meet Rahul Gandhi, he seemed more interested about and engaged with his pet dog than Sarma. Rest is history. Sarma won a second term as the Assam Chief Minister, while it is the third consecutive win for the BJP.
Also read: Kewal Dhillon: BJP’s choice surprising but calculated
Similarly, Jagan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh was not only humiliated but intimidated also by the same Congress, in whose revival his late father YSR Reddy had a great role and contribution. Jagan was also booked and jailed. Then party president Sonia Gandhi even refused to meet him after the tragic death of his father in a helicopter crash. He later formed his own YSR Congress and ruled the state of Andhra Pradesh for five years.
While the Congress has often been accusing the BJP of using the ED and the CBI against its political opponents, the Congress-led UPA government used the same agencies to investigate Jagan and jail him. He spent 16 months in prison before he got the bail.
Apparently and expectedly, the BJP had great expectations from Amarinder after he joined the party. Even after being in complete political hibernation due to his ill health for about five years now, he remains the tallest of all political leaders in Punjab. He is still remembered for his two bold decisions he took during his political career. First was resigning from the parliament and the Congress in 1984 to protest against military operation in Golden Temple and the second was enacting a special law to empower Punjab from being forced to provide extra water to the neighbouring states of Haryana and Rajasthan.
Amarinder is at an advanced stage of his political career. He is in his mid-eighties, but still remains politically alert and active as is obvious from the way he expresses his opinions. He can still prove to be the best asset for the BJP as he still commands charisma and respect. Yes, he has his own style of working, which many would take as a ‘laid back’ attitude. But once he gets into the battle mode, he actually fights like a soldier, the BJP can immensely benefit from and ignore at its own cost.
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