A big takeaway from the five Assembly election results, apart from the undiminished popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the rise of the Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab, is the complete decimation of the Congress. It seems that, of all people, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra are arduously working to attain Modi’s goal of a Congress-mukt Bharat.
Not long ago, Amarinder Singh was entrenched in Punjab as chief minister. The Akali-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance had broken; the AAP, while a rising force, was still struggling as it was unable to find a face to represent Punjab. Which made Amarinder Singh’s continuation as chief minister almost certain.
Almost, for few had been able to gauge the grand old party’s skill to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Instead of relying on Amarinder Singh—who had served as a faithful leaders for decades, had never been a threat to the top GOP leadership, had never even troubled the Gandhis—the leadership decided to bet on the cricketer-turned-commentator-turned-TV star-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu.
As Amarinder has repeated many a time, Sidhu has always been “unstable.” He abandoned the national team during the 1996 tour of England because he thought the skipper Mohammad Azharuddin was constantly abusing him, though it was later found that the umbrage was the result of a misunderstanding.
In his autobiography I was There: Memoirs of a Cricket Administrator, former BCCI secretary Jaywant Lele revealed that Sidhu got upset hearing Azharuddin was swearing. “Sidhu said he was terribly upset and decided it was not tolerable! He had not come on the tour to listen to abuses from the skipper. He was upset. So he decided to leave the team quietly,” Lele wrote.
The BCCI and the nation showed remarkable tolerance; such impetuosity on the part of Sidhu was forgotten; he went on to not just play for the country but also have a career in television and politics. It was his impetuosity and rashness that had caused the death of a man in a road rage case in 1988.
Evidently, Sidhu didn’t learn any lessons from these incidents. And the Gandhi siblings failed to discern how reckless and irresponsible he is. The results are for all to see. The GOP has been marginalized in the state where it was supposed to form government. The siblings are ensuring a Congress-mukt Bharat.