After the Punjab unit of the Congress recently sent a proposed list of district committees and members of its new executive body to the party high command for approval, discontent has started brewing among senior leaders and workers over the process of finalising the list and choice of candidates.
A few senior leaders told The Hindu that “wider consultations” were not held and the proposed list was prepared by a handful of people in the organisation.
“It would have been much better had PCC president Sunil Jakhar taken the views of other senior leaders as well. There should have been a consensuses. They should have shown magnanimity and a bigger heart... Two people sat together and prepared the list for PCC, this is not the way it works. If the intention is to win the 2022 Assembly polls then wider consultations should ought to have taken place. The process should have been open for the entire family of the Congress,” said former PCC president and Rajya Sabha MP Partap Singh Bajwa.
“It is unfortunate that a lot of people had worked hard for the party but they are not being heard. If they want to convert the Indian National Congress into a private limited company they are most welcome to do so... but let me tell you it is for such reasons that the party has been going down day by day, ” he said.
In January, this year Congress president Sonia Gandhi dissolved the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee and all district committees in the State. The State unit chief, however, was retained.
According to party insiders, several leaders and party MLAs have sent letters to AICC general secretary K.C. Venugopal against the “shortlisted” candidates for district president positions in Sangrur, Rupnagar, Ludhiana, Hoshiarpur, Moga and Amritsar.
Former Chief Minister and senior leader Rajinder Kaur Bhattal said AICC’s Punjab in-charge Asha Kumari had not spoken to her on the issue.
‘List made after inputs’
Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar said: “Everybody’s concern has been taken on board. The list has been prepared after inputs from everywhere and it has been discussed among Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, Ms. Asha Kumari and myself. Obviously there are more than one deserving candidates... We will be accommodating them. There’s lot of work to be done and there many responsibilities that need to be shouldered,” he said.