Charanjit Singh Channi is the new Punjab Chief Minister. The announcement was made by Harish Rawat, former Chief Minister of Uttarakhand and now General Secretary of the Indian National Congress (INC).
“It gives me immense pleasure to announce that Sh. #CharanjitSinghChanni has been unanimously elected as the Leader of the Congress Legislature Party of Punjab,” Rawat Tweeted.
It gives me immense pleasure to announce that Sh. #CharanjitSinghChanni has been unanimously elected as the Leader of the Congress Legislature Party of Punjab.@INCIndia @RahulGandhi @INCPunjab pic.twitter.com/iboTOvavPd
— Harish Rawat (@harishrawatcmuk) September 19, 2021
The MLA from the reserved constituency of Chamkaur Sahib was part of the anti-Amarinder camp aligned with Punjab Congress Chief Navjot Singh Sidhu, who is being perceived as an instrumental force behind Amarinder’s exit.
However, his name was a major surprise, given that the party MLA from Gurdaspur’s Dera Baba Nanak constituency, Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, had almost been finalised as chief minister. The decision to pick Channi, it seems, was a last-minute one.
Two major factors played a vital role behind Channi’s selection. First, the choice of Channi suited Sidhu more than Sukhjinder Randhawa, who is a strong leader from Punjab’s Majha area that is known for its panthic politics.
Sources said that Sidhu did not want a heavyweight to assume the chief minister’s role as that could have meant that he would be overshadowed in the run up to the coming assembly election.
It is clear now that Sidhu will emerge as the face of the party for the 2022 assembly polls and mobilise workers on ground in such a way that he will receive the top post if the party wins. Channi does not have the kind of stature and is very unlikely that Sidhu’s eventual elevation will be cause for him to feel affronted.
Secondly, Channi fits well with the state’s dynamic caste equation. Of the approximately 3 crore state population, nearly one third of them, 32%, are Dalits as per the 2011 Census. This makes Punjab the state with the highest percentage of Dalits in the country.
Dalit politics in Punjab was recently in the limelight ever since Shiromani Akali Dal, a Jatt dominated party, stitched an alliance with Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), a party mainly associated with Dalits, for state assembly polls due early next year.