It is an open secret that Charanjit Singh Channi’s selection as a preferred Chief Ministerial candidate for Punjab owes to the Congress’ ambition of wooing Dalit voters in the upcoming assembly elections. In the just-before-elections change of guard that transpired, veteran Captain Amrinder Singh lost his chair; thanks to his stronghold in Punjab posing a direct threat to the depleting hegemony of the Gandhis in the Congress party. Amidst a barrage of speculations for the new face – underlined by rife within the Punjab Congress leadership, ‘Charanjit Singh Channi’ rose to the highest seat from nowhere.
Among the frontrunners in the chief ministerial race were Navjot Singh Sidhu (A Jatt Sikh also famous as a former cricketer), Sunil Jakhar (Congress’ Hindu face in the Hindu-minority state) and Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa (strong face against the Badals). However, even before Channi could play to the galleries, he was painted the state’s first Dalit Chief Minister. Since the elevation of Channi as a CM six months before the upcoming elections, Congress is going all guns blazing about championing Dalit politics all over the country.
It’s great that for the first time in the country, a Congress candidate (Charanjit Singh Channi) will be from the Dalit community (for CM). Punjab public will accept it, too, as he’s a common man who does good work. Rahul Gandhi has given a good message: Mallikarjun Kharge pic.twitter.com/u9wfBJI1Tn
— ANI (@ANI) February 7, 2022
Today, the Former Congress Leader of Opposition in Loksabha, Mallikarjun Kharge claimed that it is for the first time in the country that a Congress candidate will be from the Dalit community as Chief Minister. While it is true that Charanjit Singh Channi rose up to become the first Dalit Chief Minister in Punjab, the party itself has had Dalit faces as Chief Ministers including Bhola Paswan Shastri and Ram Sundar Das in Bihar, Sushil Kumar Shinde in Maharashtra and Jagannath Pahadia in Rajasthan among others. This time, pertaining to a large 31.9% population of backward castes in the state of Punjab, Congress thinks it has secured a large share of the Dalit vote bank with Channi as the CM face.
However, looking back at the track record of earlier Dalit Chief Ministers representing Congress, there’s much reason for Charanjit Singh Channi to chart the forward path with extreme caution. When Damodaram Sanjeevaiah was made the first Dalit Andhra Pradesh CM in 1960, his tenure lasted not more than two years. In a similar case, when Jagannath Pahadia became the first Dalit chief minister of Rajasthan in 1980, his term, ended within a year. The same was the case with Bhola Prasad Shastri too, whose term as the first Dalit Chief Minister of Bihar lasted only for three months because the Congress party lost the majority in the Bihar assembly. But Channi’s case bears the most striking resemblance with that of Sushil Kumar Shinde of Maharashtra.
Sushil Kumar Shinde’s political journey in Maharashtra serves as a cautionary tale for Charanjit Singh Channi
Sushil Kumar Shinde, who hailed from a family of cobblers, rose up to become the first Dalit Chief Minister of Maharashtra in 2003. Similar to what happened in Punjab Congress in 2021, factionalism within the Maharashtra Congress leader cropped up a year before the state assembly elections in 2004. Vilasrao Deshmukh, a popular face from the majority Maratha community had to release his chair even after being a five-time MP and a leader who won a state assembly election in 1999 with the highest margin. He made way for Sushil Kumar Shinde, a Gandhi family loyalist. Shinde was selected as a Chief Minister of Maharashtra by Sonia Gandhi who thought of playing a Dalit card before the next assembly elections. The selection of Shinde was also a trickle-down effect of Mandal politics that played out at the Centre more than a decade earlier, in the 1990s.
Nonetheless, after the elections, the Democratic front aka the Aghadi alliance between Congress, NCP and communist parties got the majority seats with the highest number of (71) seats bagged by Sharad Pawar’s NCP. With NCP racking up more seats than the Congress, the dynamics of the alliance as agreed upon by the coalition partners altered significantly. Consequently, in place of Shinde, who was then the incumbent chief minister of Maharashtra, Vilasrao Deshmukh was sworn in to the office of CM in October 2004. Shinde, who had stewarded the storm-tossed ship of Congress in the tumultuous months before the all-important 2004 assembly polls, was replaced by Vilasrao Deshmukh after the party once again found itself in a formidable position in Maharashtra.
From being ‘appointed’ as a chief minister to govern a state amidst crisis to being hailed as the ‘Dalit’ face of the party, there are glaring similarities between what Congress did with Sushil Kumar Shinde and what is playing out with Channi today. Perhaps, there are lessons for the latter to examine the authority and honour given by the Congress to their Dalit Chief Ministers. In the forthcoming elections in Punjab, if the grand-old party manages to retain power, it will not be a surprise if Channi meets the same fate as Sushil Kumar Shinde did after the Maharashtra assembly elections in 2004 and is defenestrated from the office of CM to accommodate the demands of competing factions within the party.
The state of Punjab will go on assembly elections on February 20, 2021, in a single phase with current CM Charanjit Singh Channi contesting two seats of Chamkaur Sahib and Barnala.
