The Shahkot case

The Punjab Congress today perhaps does not know whether to laugh or cry at its predicament in Shahkot. For the people, however, it is definitely entertaining and depressing at the same time. It is laughable because of the ridiculous developments of an SHO independently booking the ruling party’s candidate for the Assembly byelection, then resigning and taking back his resignation; and sad because of the spectacle that the ruling party has reduced the democratic process to, politically as well as in governance.

Politics is a battle of perceptions, and in Shahkot, hereon, all options that the Congress has will require it to be brazen — whether it retains the candidate or replaces him with a more acceptable face. Such has been the image of Hardev Singh Laddi that it has left the Congress internally weakened in the constituency — if not in wider circles — irrespective of the result of the election. The charge of illegal mining against Laddi, which stands bolstered by the FIR, is one that puts the government in a particularly ironical situation. Here is a Chief Minister taking multiple initiatives from removing a minister to revising and re-revising the mining policy to ensure there is no corruption in the process, and yet the party puts up a candidate who is largely perceived as representative of that very malaise.

It will be hard for the Congress to justify why it has put up Laddi, other than the fact that he is close to a former minister who many believed was close to Capt Amarinder Singh. He is also not a popular face; rather, many local leaders intend not canvassing for him. The message that this sends out is that merit, or even demerit, does not count. And the question that it raises is what the party leadership hopes to gain from nominating such a fractious candidate. None of the answers can be very good for the Congress that came to power promising end of corruption in Punjab. This may well be a mere byelection, but the message it leaves behind may be read in 2019.