The slighted ex-CMs club: Congress' Amarinder, Bhupinder flex muscle at party's top brass

The Congress’ crisis of leadership continues to deepen, at least that’s the impression the seniormost leaders of the party in Haryana and Punjab would like to portray. And the leaders aren’t afraid of making their opposition to the party’s Vice President Rahul Gandhi’s choices public.

Both Amarinder Singh and Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the erstwhile chief ministers of Punjab and Haryana respectively, in the last few days have been less than discreet about their discontent over the high command’s choice of their respective state party unit chiefs.

At Sunday’s rally at the Ramlila Maidan, supporters of former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda – much as they had done at a farmers’ rally in April – jeered state party president Ashok Tanwar. The Times of India reports that when Tanwar took the stage, the ‘pink-turbaned supporters’ of Hooda began to protest loudly and proceeded to “(unfurl) their turbans and even (clamber) upon the shamiana pillars to shout down the speaker”.

Following the rally, Hooda supporters blamed Tanwar, stating that while they did not originally plan on wearing their pink turbans (that are associated with Hooda’s faction), they did so after Tanwar’s provocation – an announcement that the Haryana rallyists would be wearing red turbans.

Tanwar, who is Rahul’s choice to helm the party’s state unit is a Dalit leader while Hooda is a Jat community leader.

According to The Telegraph , Tanwar’s supporters had a negligible presence at the rally. The central leadership reportedly made an effort to mollify Hooda and his supporters by seating him on the main dais alongside party president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul, but to no avail. Senior leaders brushed aside the hooting and heckling as “a sign of energy and enthusiasm".

Meanwhile in Punjab, Singh launched another attack at long time rival and state party chief – Partap Singh Bajwa. But this time he went a step further and criticised Rahul Gandhi saying that “reality hasn’t yet sunk in” for the party vice president.

In the  interview with The Times of India , Singh expressed his disillusionment that “nobody in (the) party is taking Punjab seriously”.

“If the man (Bajwa) is a failure do you have to reinforce failure by keeping him there? This is no way of functioning. Mrs Indira Gandhi would have thrown him out long time ago. By now Rahul should have decided that the man is incompetent and should be replaced,” the former chief minister said.

At the start of the month, Sonia had held separate meetings with Singh, Bajwa and veteran party leader Rajinder Kaur Bhattal to discuss party leadership in the state ahead of its election in 2017. And while Bajwa told The Indian Express that his job as state unit chief was secure, party sources reportedly see an ‘imminent’ change of guard on the cards as the Congress attempts to capitalise on anti-incumbency in the state.

With an eye on the Bihar Assembly election that starts next month, this sort of in-fighting is the last thing the Congress wanted. Particularly since its Mahagathbandhan alliance in Bihar holds tenuously at best with ‘allies’ Lalu Yadav and Nitish Kumar missing – both physically and from Rahul’s rally at Champaran on 19 September.