Chandigarh: The Congress on Sunday picked Charanjit Singh Channi as Punjab’s next chief minister, a day after Amarinder Singh resigned following a bitter power struggle over the past several months in the party’s state unit. While Channi appears to be a surprise choice, it is being deemed as a calculated gamble by the party which is hoping to regain lost ground from the unsavoury exit of Amarinder Singh by naming a Dalit for the post.
Channi, who met Governor Banwarilal Purohit to stake his claim for the top job in the poll-bound state soon after being elected as the leader of the Congress Legislature Party, will be the state’s first Chief Minister from a Scheduled Caste background. He is set to be sworn in on Monday at 11 AM.
How Charanjit Channi Rose to Chief Minister Post
Channi, 49, becomes chief minister with less than six months to go before the assembly polls in Punjab. The party settled on the technical education minister in the outgoing Amarinder Singh cabinet after a flurry of consultations through the day, following an abrupt cancellation of an important meeting of the CLP.
Several names did the rounds over the next several hours and Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa also a minister in the Amarinder Singh cabinet appeared to be the clear frontrunner for a while. The Congress decision was announced on Twitter around 6 pm and came as a surprise to most who were speculating Sukhjinder Randhawa to be the next Punjab CM.
“It gives me immense pleasure to announce that Sh. #CharanjitSinghChanni has been unanimously elected as the Leader of the Congress Legislature Party of Punjab,” AICC general secretary Harish Rawat said. A day earlier, a CLP meeting had authorised Congress president Sonia Gandhi to take the decision.
The 58-year-old three-time legislator from Chamkaur Sahib assembly constituency in Rupnagar district had joined the Congress in 2012 and was holding the portfolios of Technical Education, Industrial Training, Employment Generation and Tourism and Cultural Affairs in the outgoing Amarinder Singh-led cabinet.
He had along with three other ministers rebelled against Amarinder Singh while choosing to side with the camp of state Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu. He is considered close to cricketer-turned-politician Sidhu.
He has been a vocal critic of the government on the issues related to Dalits like representation of Scheduled Caste in senior government posts.
His political journey began with being elected as the president of the Kharar municipal council in 2002. He first contested as an Independent in 2007 and won from Chamkaur Sahib Assembly constituency. He joined the Congress in 2012 and was again elected as legislator from the same seat.
He was the leader of opposition in the Punjab Assembly during the previous SAD-BJP regime.
Political Controversy
During his ministerial tenure, Channi was at the centre of a row after a woman IAS officer had accused him of sending an inappropriate text message in 2018. Thereafter, the Punjab Women Commission had taken suo motu cognisance of the matter and had sought the government’s stand.
At that time, the then Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had asked Channi to tender an apology to the woman officer and had also said he believed the matter had been “resolved” to her satisfaction.
But the issue again came to haunt Channi in May this year when the women panel chief threatened to go on a hunger strike if the state government failed to apprise her within a week of its stand on an “inappropriate text” message issue.
But Sidhu’s camp had alleged that it was an attempt by Amarinder Singh to target his detractors.
In 2018, Channi again courted controversy when he was purportedly caught on camera flipping a coin to decide between two candidates for the post of lecturer in a polytechnic institute, leaving the Amarinder Singh government red-faced.
Amarinder Singh’s Exit
Amarinder Singh was nudged into quitting ostensibly over his failure to fulfil the promises made by the party in the 2017 assembly polls. It is not clear if the new CM will be able to accomplish the task in the time available to him, observers told PTI. But his appointment will allow the party to play the Dalit card in the coming elections. An estimated 30 per cent of the state’s population, counting both Sikhs and Hindus, is from that community.
The opposition BJP had earlier announced that if voted to power in Punjab, it will make a Dalit the chief minister, while the Shiromani Akali Dal — which is fighting the polls in alliance with the BSP — had said that its deputy CM would be from that community.
Channi met the Punjab Governor and staked claim to form a government soon after the Congress announcement. Recently appointed Punjab Congress president Navjot Singh Sidhu and the party’s central observers Ajay Maken and Harish Chaudhary accompanied him.
Amarinder Singh congratulated him. “My best wishes to Charanjit Singh Channi. I hope he’s able to keep the border state of Punjab safe and protect our people from the growing security threat from across the border,” he said.
Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, the earlier “frontrunner” for the post, said, “I welcome the decision of the party high command.
With PTI inputs
