Chandigarh: Already trying to come to terms after the embarrassing defeat in the recently concluded assembly elections, the road ahead for the Congress appears to be tough, especially after the abandoning of the party by senior leaders including former ministers, MLAs, and senior office bearers.
In the recent past, Congress leaders including a prominent Dalit face Raj Kumar Verka along with other senior leaders namely Balbir Singh Sidhu, Gurpreet Singh Kangar and Sunder Sham Arora joined the BJP in presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah. Former Akali MLA Sarup Chand Singla and Mohinder Kaur Josh and former Congress MLA from Barnala Kewal Singh Dhillon also joined the saffron party.
Kewal Singh Dhillon was immediately awarded by BJP after he was nominated as the party candidate for the Sangrur parliamentary by-elections.
The unfolding of unforeseeable events in politics is not unusual. The massive defeat of Congress in the recently concluded assembly elections saw the organizational rejig in the Punjab unit with the change of top leadership, shifting loyalty by senior Congressmen to the saffron party which left many fuming and embarrassed.
Political pundits here believe that the season of switching loyalties often comes either a little ahead of elections or after it and the same happened with several Congress and SAD leaders joining hands with the BJP, which is all out to expand its base in Punjab, especially after the party’s long time political alliance partner SAD(B) severing ties with it on the issue of farm laws.
It was expected of many Congress leaders to quit the party after shifting of loyalty by the former Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) president Sunil Jakhar to BJP. State or public interests are secondary to the turncoats who choose to side with the political party that fulfils their self-interests. Such leaders have weak loyalties and soft ideologies which keep changing especially when it comes to their personal political interests.
“Like rats are the first one to flee a plunging vessel, similarly, the political leaders with weak strength and ideologies but obsessed with self-interests switch loyalty seeing a political vacuum, but in this case, BJP stands beneficiary having a group of seasoned politicians on its side,” said sources.
