Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Saturday resigned after months of infighting in the party. Amarinder Singh said he felt “humiliated” and said he would not accept state Congress president Navjot Singh Sidhu as the next CM or face of the party in the assembly polls.
However, stepping down from the CM’s chair is not the first setback that Captain Amarinder Singh has seen during his career. This was the third resignation yesterday. But, the last two resignations show that the Captain has emerged more powerful after his failures. The former chief minister knows how to play his cards and is known to never indulge in side politics.
first resignation
Amarinder Singh became an MP for the first time in 1980 and joined talks to resolve the issue of Punjab. However, Operation Blue Star happened and Singh resigned from the party and Parliament despite being a close friend of the Gandhi family.
This move worked in favor of Gandhi, who for two decades was prominent in the affairs of the Punjab Congress. He was a prominent leader of the state unit of the party.
second resignation
Amarinder Singh moved to the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and became a minister in the government of Surjit Singh Barnala in 1985. He resigned from the cabinet seven months later when the police entered the Darbar Sahib on Barnala’s orders. This move inspired Amarinder to emerge as a Sikh leader. The move worked for Amarinder and helped propel him to the CM’s chair later in 2017.
Sikh Factor
Operation Blue Star in 1984 and Bargari sacrilege waged war against the Congress and the SAD respectively in a year, but it was Captain Amarinder Singh who emerged as a major leader after his exit after these two incidents.
Reports suggest that it was only because of Amarinder’s acceptance among the Sikhs that helped revive the Congress in Punjab since 1999. The party had become untouchable for the Sikhs, a fact which was evident in the general elections of 1996 and 1998 and the assembly elections of 1997. But Amarinder became a factor in the revival of the Congress in Punjab.
brought Congress back to power
Though the party lost the 2007 and 2012 assembly elections under the captaincy, he did not lose his charisma.
In 2014, during the Lok Sabha elections, he contested against top BJP leader Arun Jaitley from Amritsar. Although the Congress suffered a defeat with the lowest number of seats, Amarinder Singh won the election and also managed to take over the position of the party’s state president from Pratap Singh Bajwa.
The ruling Akali Dal had come third in the 2017 assembly elections. The Congress won a majority, with most of the seats coming from Sikh-dominated rural areas.
History has shown that each time he resigned, Amarinder emerged victorious after brief setbacks. Whenever his party Congress weakened, Amarinder became strong at the same time.
After his resignation, Amarinder indicated that he was not leaving the pitch. He said, ‘I have resigned today itself, but in politics there are always options. The options are limitless and we’ll see what happens next. I have allies in my 52 years long tenure in politics. I will discuss it with my colleagues both in Parliament, the Assembly and the party,” he said, giving a mixed signal to the Congress.
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