BackDecentralize Congress to deal with satraps: Amarinder Singh
Former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh says Congress would have won Assam, Andhra Pradesh elections if rebel leaders had not quit
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New Delhi: Former Punjab chief minister and leader of the Congress campaign in the state Captain Amarinder Singh said the party would have won the assembly polls in Andhra Pradesh in 2014 and Assam earlier this year if rebel leaders Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy and Himanta Biswa Sarma had not quit.
In an interview with NDTV, Singh said that Congress leaders should draw lessons from the exits of powerful regional leaders and the resultant electoral defeats.
“Every state has regional leaders developing. How do you take them on if you don’t develop them in the state? We must decentralize to deal with regional satraps. The new generation that is emerging would want this to happen,’’ he said on the ‘Walk the Talk’ show on NDTV.
The channel, which will run the full interview on Friday evening, showed edited excerpts on Wednesday.
Singh’s comments come in the backdrop of growing dissent within the party, which has seen a series of top-level exits and rebellions in several state units over the past six months.
On Tuesday, cracks seemed to appear on the issue of the goods and services tax (GST)—while the party has opposed the tax in its current form nationally and insisted on a cap on the GST rate, its state-level representatives at a meeting in Kolkata said it was “better not to have a cap", according to a person aware of the developments.
Singh said an announcement formally naming him as the Congress’s chief ministerial candidate in Punjab should happen soon.
The Congress party is looking to wrest power in Punjab after a gap of a decade from the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) combine.
While Singh has already been named the face of the Congress campaign, the party has not yet officially named him the chief ministerial candidate.
In the interview, he added that announcements like these cannot happen in a press conference.
Congress’s troubles began with Arunachal Pradesh, where dissident leader Kalikho Pul, supported by the BJP, upstaged Congress leader Nabam Tuki as chief minister.
This was followed by Uttarakhand, where nine rebel leaders joined hands with the BJP and, most recently, Tripura where six legislators quit the party to join the ruling Trinamool Congress.
“When somebody starts going down, rats start leaving the sinking ship. Trouble starts happening. I think (Congress vice-president) Rahul Gandhi is quite flexible. He listens,’’ Singh said, while responding to a question on the developments in states such as Tripura and added that the party needs to “decentralize" to function effectively.
Analysts feel such comments from strong leaders like Singh point to a larger problem in the Congress—that of regional leaders not getting their due in the hierarchy.
“Such comments by strong regional leaders expose the fact that both (Congress president) Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi don’t have the social base but are holding power because of the Gandhi name. Such comments coming from strong regional leaders who have a social base is good for the party but not for Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. All these leaders are powerful state leaders who are now demanding greater recognition for their efforts and they have started to come out against the central leaders," said Bidyut Chakrabarty, political analyst and political science professor at Delhi University.
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