In house opposition

In house opposition

The Congress, fighting a crisis in Punjab, lands in fresh controversy with ‘Panj pyare’.

The trouble does not seem to be ending any time soon for the Punjab Congress. The party comes with an in-house Opposition which has already projected its leaders as ‘power-hungry’ who lack unanimity. And, to make matters worse, just when they decide to ‘talk it out’, one or the other section spills out remarks which reverse the whole rapprochement purpose. The ambitious Navjot Sidhu and his in-party allies simply want to run over anything that comes in the way to the Chief Minister’s chair. The ‘eint se eint baja du’ remark by Sidhu on the All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge of Punjab Harish Rawat, and the feud between Rawat and Congress MLA Pargat Singh, proved that the bad blood among the top party leaders was not trivial. Hence Rawat, in an attempt to mend the fences, met Sidhu and his four working presidents in the Congress Bhawan on Tuesday and referred to them as Panj pyare, thus courting trouble and having had to issue an apology on Facebook after the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) demanded that the Government should book him for hurting the religious sentiments of the Sikh community.

Rawat said that even while meaning respect, objectionable words are sometimes used; he also promised to clean a gurudwara complex in his State as penance. The SAD spokesperson, Daljit Singh Cheema, added that the Congress has always been anti-Sikh and been hurting Sikh sentiments. In Sikh theology, Panj pyare (The Beloved Five) is a collective name given to the five Sikhs who were the first to be initiated into the order of the Khalsa and can perform a baptism ceremony to initiate other Sikhs into the order of the Khalsa. It is a highly regarded term in Sikh community. Rawat has shot his own party in the foot and now a mere apology cannot undo the damage that has been done. Religion has been the most relied upon tool in Indian politics and a slip of the tongue can be used against the Government. The party, already in tatters in the State, wouldn’t want to go the harm’s way in the polls. It’s premature to speculate that cleaning a gurudwara complex would cleanse the former Uttarakhand Chief Minister of this ‘sin’, but the voters would ultimately decide whether this remark, together with the many controversies surrounding the Congress party, would impact it in the 2022 elections.