Bhattal follow through may stump Congress

NEW DELHI: With elections looming large and the BJP grinning from ear to ear, Sonia Gandhi can ill-afford domestic problems. And yet on Tuesday the Congress chief was forced to give a thumbs up to dissidence by accommodating the rebellious Rajinder Kaur Bhattal as deputy chief minister in Punjab.
The announcement, by a poker faced Mohsina Kidwai, AICC general secretary, came almost a month after Bhattal began her campaign for the ouster of chief minister Captain Amrinder Singh.
“Captain Amrinder Singh will continue to be chief minister, and Rajinder Kaur Bhattal will be Deputy Chief Minister�, Kidwai said emphatically, looking to quash speculation on the Punjab chief minister’s immediate fate. She then announced that a cabinet expansion would be undertaken in Punjab soon and pronounced the chapter closed.
That is unlikely to be. Though the new appointment and the cabinet expansion will lead to some sort of peace in Punjab, it is bound to provoke similar demands in other states.
For now a beaming Bhattal has given up the oust-Amrinder demand and assured the party of a united fight in the Lok Sabha elections. But other disgruntled elements are likely to get the courage to do a Bhattal.
In Gujarat, Amarsinh Choudhary is breathing down the party leadership’s neck and the Antony-Karunakaran tussle in Kerala is legend. Add to the dissidence the party’s fast depleting kitty of states – 2004 has begun rather bleakly for the Congress.
The ramifications of the Punjab solution, worked out on the eve of a crucial Congress Working Committee meeting on election strategy, are not lost on the party.
Party spokesman Jaipal Reddy, who also headed the panel that worked out the compromise, made clear that "it was a [compromise] formula evolved in the specific context of Punjab."
On Wednesday, members of the party’s highest decision making body will put their heads together to discuss the electoral debacle in three major states last month and the party’s obvious lack of preparedness for early Lok Sabha elections.
Tuesday’s climb down on the issue of dissidence in Punjab is a weak position to begin that meeting.