Days after the Congress suffered a crushing defeat in the Punjab Assembly election, the blame game over the debacle has started in the State unit.
Senior Congress leader and former Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu on Sunday said the Congress leadership scripted its own defeat by giving power to turncoats and opportunists who were alien to the Congress, its history and its culture.
“The decline of the party’s prospects started the day when Sunil Jakhar, a dyed–in– the–wool Congressman, was replaced by an outsider Navjot Singh Sidhu, who had joined the Congress just four years ago,” he said here.
Asserting that the party committed one blunder after another, he said, removing Amarinder Singh as the Chief Minister proved to be the last straw on the camel’s back which eventually led to the complete collapse of the party and the government.
“The third mistake was refusing to appoint Sunil Jakhar as the Chief Minister despite the support of an overwhelming majority of MLAs just because he was a Hindu, despite Congress having a secular character and culture. This all was followed by the appointment of Charanjit Singh Channi, who again was not a real Congressman as he had tried his luck with the Shiromani Akali Dal, the People’s Party of Punjab before joining the Congress. The party and the government were handed over to rank outsiders,” he said.
Mr. Sidhu said the way the party had arbitrarily denied tickets to senior and veteran leaders like Amrik Singh Dhillon, Jagmohan Singh Kang, Ajaib Singh Bhatti and Kewal Singh Dhillon was yet another fatal mistake by the leadership. “It was strange and surprising that the party looked like it was in a race with itself in repeating one blunder after another to cause its own doom,” he said.
The three-time former MLA from Mohali pointed out that just before the appointment of Mr. Sidhu as the PCC president, everyone was of the unanimous view that the Congress will repeat itself in 2022. “But the countdown for doom started the day Navjot Sidhu took over as the PCC president,” he said.
The former Minister said instead of owning up the blame and responsibility, those responsible were shamelessly glorifying themselves as if they had won “Paramvir Chakra”. He said the responsibility must be fixed and those responsible must be made accountable, lest Congress should get damaged further and destroyed beyond redemption.
