Rahul Gandhi's Congress Is Repeating Its Old Blunders In Punjab, Only The Faces Have Changed

It is often said that history repeats itself. What is usually left unsaid is that repetition can be painful when lessons from the past are ignored. That is precisely what appears to be unfolding in the Punjab Congress.

The faces may have changed, but the nature of the infighting remains disturbingly familiar to what the party witnessed in the state unit nearly five years ago.

The only difference is that in 2021, the Congress was fighting to retain power in Punjab. Today, it has little to defend and much to gain after the humiliating drubbing it suffered at the hands of the Aam Aadmi Party in the 2022 Assembly elections. Yet, instead of rebuilding itself with discipline and humility, the party seems to have reopened old wounds.

Old Rivalries Resurface

The roots of the past friction go back to 2017, when the claims of cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu were set aside in favour of the ageing Captain Amarinder Singh. Sidhu, at his abrasive and combative best, behaved as though he were still in the middle of a cricket match, swinging at every ball that came his way. The Captain, instead of trying to manage or accommodate his energetic colleague, appeared more interested in pushing him out of the team.

Sidhu resigned from the ministry, but he did not accept defeat. The battle within the party continued. When he was later appointed president of the Punjab Congress unit, the party effectively created two power centres within the same organisation. That dual leadership only deepened the contradictions and weakened the government. Ultimately, Captain Amarinder Singh was forced to step down as chief minister just months before the election and was replaced by Charanjit Singh Channi. But by then, it was too late to repair the damage. The Congress was swept aside in the 2022 polls and reduced to a humiliating 18 seats in the 117-member Assembly.

Leadership Struggle Continues

Cut to 2026, and the ghosts of that crisis have returned in a new form. Two senior leaders are once again flexing their muscles in public. On one side is Channi, now chairman of the Congress campaign committee in Punjab. On the other hand, Amarinder Singh Raja Warring is the incumbent president of the state unit. Both seem determined to push the other out, each with an eye on becoming the next chief minister of Punjab. The pattern is painfully familiar: ambition first, organisation later.

What is equally striking is the role of the central leadership. The same people at the party headquarters who allowed the 2021 crisis to drift now appear no more effective, or perhaps no more willing, to bring order to the state unit. Rahul Gandhi, though holding no formal organisational post then, was calling the shots. Mallikarjun Kharge, who was the party’s designated troubleshooter in those days and is now the national president, failed to extinguish the fire. This time, the responsibility for damage control was given to former Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel. But his intervention, too, seems to have fallen short.

Rahul Gandhi had earlier resolved the 2021 dispute in his own style by getting the then chief minister to step aside and placating Sidhu with a top organisational post in the state. That arrangement delivered neither unity nor electoral recovery. Instead, it merely postponed the crisis until the party met its worst defeat in the state.

Now, after Baghel’s limited success and Kharge’s visible helplessness, Rahul Gandhi appears to have stepped in once again, albeit late. His trusted aide, KC Venugopal, reportedly spoke to Channi, after which the former chief minister softened his stand and declared that “all is well”. But for how long can this feel-good line hold? The matter has not been resolved. The differences between the two most powerful leaders in the Punjab unit continue to simmer and, unless handled with care, could boil over into a full-blown inferno as the next Assembly elections draw closer.

Lessons Yet To Be Learnt