Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi said on Tuesday the party “should announce” its chief minister candidate, a sign of more trouble for Congress ahead of the Punjab election as the party faces infighting. “As long as the party doesn’t announce a CM candidate, it loses,” he said.
Channi made the remarks in an interview with local channel Pro Punjab TV in response to a question about whether Congress should announce its CM candidate.
“When the party announced its CM candidate in the 2017 election, it won. Before that, when it did not announce a candidate, it lost. Whenever the party did not announce a CM candidate, it lost so the party should announce,” he said. He went to say he was a popular leader, and people waved at him and broke barricades to greet him. However, Channi declined to comment when asked who should be the CM candidate. He said the party would decide that.
Channi’s statement comes as Congress has made it clear that it will not announce its CM candidates before parliamentary elections.
Until a few days ago, Punjab PCC chairman Navjot Singh Sidhu was pushing the party’s top command to announce the CM candidate. Sidhu said he should be declared a CM candidate and said he has a Punjab agenda and a roadmap to implement it. He also said AAP lost the 2017 election because it had no CM candidates.
While Sidhu has not raised the issue since last week’s meeting of Congress general secretary KC Venugopal with three Punjab cabinet ministers, he officially launched his “Punjab model” on Tuesday, saying it would become the party’s manifesto a part of.
A PTI report also quoted Sidhu as saying that the people of Punjab would choose the CM over the top command of the party. In response to a question, he was quoted as saying: “Who told you that the High Command would be the CM? … The Punjabis will elect the priorities and the Punjabis will also be the CMs.”
Complete News Source : The IndianEXPRESS
