In the course of the Punjab crisis, Twitter witnessed a blitzkrieg of dramatic takedowns and bickering between senior Congress leaders – Navjot Singh Sidhu, Captain Amarinder Singh and Harish Rawat – who, during the past few months, took to the micro-blogging website for communication.
For all optical purposes, the deliberate use of Twitter has been action-packed, with fellow party leaders hitting out at each other over political and personal issues surrounding around the state of Punjab. Sidhu, Captain and Rawat have remained the main players
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Sidhu’s tweets ranged from power tariff for consumers, termination of power purchase agreements (PPAs) to open resentment against Captain’s government.
Meanwhile, former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, too, have trained his guns at Sidhu, attacking his clichés and calling him “unfit” to lead the party. Singh has also maintained that Punjab’s security will at stake if the state is rested in his hands.
Shortly after Sidhu resigned as the Punjab Congress chief on Wednesday, Singh said “he is not a stable man”. Singh has, in fact, vowed to continue his fight against Sidhu.
“I told you so… he is not a stable man and not fit for the border state of punjab,” Singh tweeted.
After putting his papers, Sidhu tweeted a new video in which he said that he will continue to fight for the truth till his last breath. “Will keep fighting for rights and truth till last breath,” his post read.
On the other hand, miffed with the party and the ongoing tussle between him and Sidhu, ex-CM Singh has removed the mention of “Congress” from his Twitter bio.
On Friday, at 11:42 p.m, Punjab Congress in-charge Rawat tweeted about the decision to hold an urgent CLP meeting on Saturday. Ten minutes later at 11:52 pm, PCC chief Navjot Singh Sidhu directed all the MLAs to be present. The announcement would seem sudden but the developments prior to it are indicative that the Congress high command was under pressure from the anti-Captain Amarinder Singh lobby to act.
The ball was set into motion two days ago when about 40 MLAs wrote to the Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi seeking a CLP to take stock of the 18-point agenda which Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh had been tasked to fulfil prior to elections. Sources said that the letter put the high command in a quandary. Rawat, though on numerous occasions has reiterated that there was no move to remove Singh, but the letter by a big chunk of legislators was too important politically to be ignored.
Reliable sources in the party revealed that after deliberations, the high command had decided to send two party observers to “gauge” the mood of the majority of the legislators in the state.
The turmoil within the Punjab Congress turned into a full-blown war in May, following which the patry’s central leadership rushed to intervene. A three-member committee headed by Rajya Sabha MP Mallikarjun Kharge was set up on May 29 to resolve factionalism.
The Committee met 150-odd Punjab leaders, many of whom accused Captain of being “hand in glove” with the Badals and non-fulfilment of election promises.
Singh has remained unhappy over Sidhu’s equation with the brother–sister duo, Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi, who “saw” him as the next generation face of the Congress in Punjab.
On July 18, the Congress leadership named Sidhu as the state unit chief along with four working presidents, overlooking the ex-CM’s objections.
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