According to reports, the Congress high command is likely to appoint Navjot Singh Sidhu as the next PPCC chief.
As efforts continue to crack a truce between Punjab CM Amarinder Singh and Navjot Singh Sidhu, and other MLAs who scaled up the issue of unfulfilled poll promises, the Congress high command is likely to appoint Navjot Singh Sidhu as the next PPCC chief.
“Announcing Sidhu as the PPCC president makes him frontrunner for the post of the CM in the Assembly polls due next year. Given the CM’s opposition to Sidhu’s candidature as the state unit chief, the party has to be prepared for a different working formula to bring both the leaders on the same page. Appointing two-three working presidents — a Dalit and a Hindu face — under the PPCC chief is also being discussed,” said a senior leader privy to the discussions, the Tribune reported.
Before it announces the “peace formula” to end the crisis in the state unit, the top leadership wants everything settled down. Earlier, to find solution to the issue of dissidence in the state unit over the last two months, working Congress president Sonia Gandhi set up three-member Mallikarjun Kharge panel to listen to grievances of Punjab leaders, before Rahul Gandhi met them.
“In the event of Sidhu becoming the PPCC president, the Chief Minister’s camp would want truce with the annoyed ministers and MLAs. The need is both ways,” pointed out a senior party leader.
Sukhjinder Randhawa, Tript Rajinder Bajwa, Sukhbinder Sarkaria and Charanjit Channi, amid the escalating differences in the state unit, even boycotted a Cabinet meeting chaired by the Chief Minister. The dissident leaders have been voicing their concerns over speedy justice in sacrilege and police firing cases, cancellation of power purchase agreements (PPAs) and action against transport and drug mafia.
Randhawa said he had no differences with the Chief Minister. “I had attended a meeting chaired by the Chief Minister on debt waiver yesterday. My fight is issue-based, not person-based. The party is supreme. Whoever is appointed the party president, others will work with him for the benefit of the party, which will form the government next year. When Partap Singh Bajwa was chosen as the party president, we worked with him too,” Randhawa was quoted as saying by the Tribune.
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