Tale of power transfers in two important states
Last week, power transfer happened in contrasting styles in a couple of states ruled by two different parties. While Gujarat’s lightweight CM Vijay Rupani quietly walked into the sunset after suddenly putting in his papers, powerful Punjab CM Amarinder Singh left kicking and screaming, intending to give his nemesis Navjot Singh Sidhu a hard time.
The wheel of fate turned 180 degrees with the dissenting faction getting to rule in just about six months and the ruler becoming the vocal rebel indulging in name-calling, labelling Sidhu incompetent and a national security threat. Juxtapose this with the new government in Gujarat where the entire Rupani ministry was dropped and a bunch of nobodies installed as ministers with another faceless person as CM. As many as 21 of the 24 ministers in Gujarat had no previous ministerial experience. The grumbling of the sacked ministers was not loud enough to disturb the leadership in Delhi. For, they owe their presence in the Assembly to the vote-catching ability of PM Narendra Modi.
In both the states, the logic behind change in leadership was that anti-incumbency had dangerously built up against the dispensations in power ahead of polls though the ruling parties themselves had public acceptability. The ease with which Modi did it in Gujarat showed his stranglehold over the party. In Punjab, party lawmakers took months to rally around Sidhu despite the Congress high command indicating its preference for him, suggesting the tenuous hold of the Gandhis on them and Amarinder’s towering stature. By becoming a party to engineering defection, the Gandhis possibly created a Frankenstein in Amarinder.
Just the other day, agitating farmers in Punjab had urged parties to stay off electioneering till state polls are notified, so as not to weaken their protest against the three farm laws. Yet, the Congress mishandling has taken the focus off farmers, and made the state elections a high-voltage Amarinder versus Sidhu contest. The final outcome will depend on whichever way Amarinder swings. Opposition parties in the state are already salivating at the bundle of options on the table. Given Sidhu’s inexperience in statecraft, if the Congress were to lose Punjab, it would have nowhere to hide.