Congresss Punjab Story Eight Decades Of Infighting Eight Decades Of Resilience

Last Sunday, when BJP national president Nitin Nabin asked why the Congress continues to find acceptance in Punjab despite the scars of 1984, he touched upon one of the state’s enduring political mysteries.

After all, this is a state where memories of Operation Blue Star and the anti-Sikh killings that followed remain deeply embedded in the collective consciousness. Yet, the Congress returned to power in 1992 under Beant Singh.

That paradox has repeated itself throughout Punjab’s political history. Few parties have fought with themselves as consistently as the Congress and prevailed. The party dominated politics in undivided Punjab from 1947 to 1966 and after its trifurcation in 1966, won five of the 13 Assembly elections until 2022. It has given the highest number of Chief Ministers to the state: 12 distinct faces, including its first woman CM, against three by the Akali Dal, which formed the government seven times in this period.

The story of a quarrelsome Congress began right after Independence. Barely had the dust of Partition settled when Congress leaders were at each other’s throats. The state’s first CM, the gentle, polite-to-a-fault doctor-turned-freedom fighter Gopi Chand Bhargava, a Gandhian who spun his own clothes, found himself locked in a bitter struggle with Bhim Sen Sachar, the legal eagle who would later become CM himself — his son Justice Rajinder Sachar authored the seminal report on Indian Muslims in 2006. The rivalry grew so intense that Punjab witnessed President’s Rule in 1951, the first such instance in independent India.

Even its most memorable CM, the no-nonsense Partap Singh Kairon, widely regarded as one of the most qualified, with postgraduate degrees in political science from the University of Michigan and economics from the University of California, Berkeley, was hamstrung by squabbling colleagues during his eight-year tenure (1956–1964). Today, Kairon is considered a giant among Punjab CMs, credited with establishing Punjab Agricultural University and laying the foundations of the state’s Green Revolution-era progress. A tough administrator, he used men disguised as sadhus to catch corrupt officials. The late Chief Election Commissioner M S Gill once recalled how Kairon would often keep his turban on the table while working at the Punjab Secretariat and tie it while descending the stairs.

The party was perhaps most united under Beant Singh, who led the Congress government after the dark decade of militancy following the 1992 polls. But Singh, known for keeping an open house and meeting constituents on his lawns every morning, was killed by a human bomb in the foyer of the secretariat at Chandigarh in 1995. His grandson Ravneet Bittu is now a BJP leader and Union Minister.

The two-time CM Captain Amarinder Singh, the savvy Maharaja of Patiala whose ties with the Gandhis dated back to his Doon school days with Rajiv Gandhi, and his mother’s friendship with Indira Gandhi, also could not complete his second term due to internal strife. Later, Amarinder left the party for the BJP, as did many of its tall leaders. Yet, the Congress survived the mass desertions, as was evident from its handsome showing in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls: it won seven of the 13 parliamentary seats despite each candidate fending for himself without a coherent, centralised poll strategy.

Unlike the Shiromani Akali Dal that traditionally drew strength from the rural Sikh peasantry, or the BJP whose influence remained concentrated among urban Hindus, the Congress is a catch-all platform. It accommodates people from all religions, has room for both landlords and labourers, Dalits and Jat Sikhs, traders and government employees, city slickers and village strongmen. Its leaders fight bitterly, but usually within the same tent. This broad social coalition has often proved more durable than ideological cohesion.

Today, however, Punjab’s political landscape has changed. For decades, power alternated between the Congress and the Akalis, who aligned first with the Jana Sangh and then the BJP. That arrangement was disrupted by the victory of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in 2022, which enjoys an overwhelming majority in the Assembly with 94 of the 117 seats. The party, for which a win in the polls is a matter of survival, is pulling out all the stops to reach out to every voter in the state with doles, jobs, and more. Then, there is the BJP behemoth with the agility of a cat, making its most determined bid to win Punjab on its own.

Yet, the Congress enters the race as usual: a house divided with a contested leadership and a dithering high command.

The question facing the party today is not whether it can survive factionalism. History suggests it can. For nearly eight decades, Punjab’s Congress leaders have displayed an extraordinary ability to wound one another without destroying the party. The real question is whether that old formula of muddling through will still work in a Punjab that is changing faster than the Congress itself.

Manraj Grewal Sharma is a senior journalist and the Resident Editor Read More