What Sidhu & Channi Had to Say About Congress CM Candidate for Punjab Polls

Channi said that the party should declare the CM candidate before the polls but Sidhu seemed to have other ideas.

Punjab CM Charanjit Channi and state Congress chief Navjot Sidhu.

(Photo Courtesy: Erum Gour/The Quint).

Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi said on Tuesday, 11 January, that the Congress party "should announce" its CM candidate for the 2022 state elections.

He went on to say that "whenever the party has not announced the CM candidate, it has lost."

"When the party declared its CM candidate during the 2017 elections, it won. Before that, when it did not declare the candidate, it lost", he added during an interview to a local TV channel called Pro Punjab TV.

He did not, however, address the question of whom the Congress Party should pick as the CM candidate, but he did not refrain from saying that he was a popular leader who people broke barricades to meet, The Indian Express reported.

Sidhu and the 'Punjab Model'

Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu, however, is not letting himself out of the limelight.

Having indicated in the past that he should be CM candidate for the Congress Party, Sidhu has been pushing his agenda for Punjab and a roadmap to get it done in what he calls the "Punjab Model".

Until a few days, he, too, was insisting that a CM candidate should be declared by the Congress Party.

When asked by reporters, however, whether the party high command would nominate the CM candidate, Sidhu fired back.

"Everyone wants to be CM. People of Punjab will decide who will be the Chief Minister. Who told you that the (Congress) high command will make the CM?" he was quoted as saying by NDTV.

The CM candidate of Punjab, therefore, is yet to be ascertained.

But what is certain is that the internal crisis of the Punjab Congress, which has been going on for months tracing back to Captain Amarinder's resignation as CM, continues and shows no signs of abating.

(With inputs from the Indian Express and NDTV)