Jagtar Singh

  Rahul Gandhi performs vanishing  act as Congress prepares to face existential challenge in Punjab and UP   Ground Zero Jagtar Singh   Former Congress president and now de facto chief Rahul Gandhi was scheduled to kick start his party’s poll campaign in Punjab on January 3 in the election year 2022 from the same village of Killi Chahalan near Moga from where the Shiromani Akali Dal had put the party into election gear on its 101 st anniversary conference on December 14 last. Suddenly it was given out that the rally had been postponed and the reason being speculated upon was the proposed   mega event by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Ferozepur on January 5 in the state. However,   it has now been officially announced that he has gone to Italy for about a fortnight on a personal visit. His priorities are different. He left India as the screening committee for Punjab was finalising the list of candidates that was supposed to be announced early this time unlike in previous

  Congress chief Navjot Sidhu steps up attack against own govt, latest salvo in context of Majithia   Ground Zero Jagtar Singh   The Congress in Punjab seems to be getting deeper and deeper into the mess rooted in the power struggle among the top leadership in the run up to the Assembly election due in February 2022. State party chief Navjot Singh Sidhu has fired fresh salvo though indirectly at Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi and Deputy Chief Minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa who is also the Home Minister. In his latest interaction with the news channel, he blamed “lack of political will” for delay in the arrest of powerful Akali leader and former minister Bikram Singh Majithia against whom case has been registered under the NDPS Act relating to narcotic drugs. Majithia is seeking judicial remedy. This ‘lack of political will’ comment is although veiled but at the same time, pointed attack on Channi and Randhawa. Sidhu has been dominating the print and TV medi

    Big win for AAP in local body polls in island Chandigarh close to Punjab polls   Ground Zero Jagtar Singh   Two significant trends are available on Monday in the context of the forthcoming Assembly elections in Punjab due in February 2022 that is going to be the most intense competition ever witnessed as it is going to be five dimensional. The Aam Aadmi Party today registered a major victory but remained short of absolute majority in the municipal corporation elections in Chandigarh pushing the ruling Bharatiya Party to the second position. The Congress failed to harvest the anti-incumbency and trailed at third position. Punjab Congress president Navjot Singh Sidhu yesterday raked up further controversy as usual thereby plunging his own party further down the tunnel going by today’s headline that stated ‘Sidhu targets Channi govt, again’. Of course, it is not a complete headline but the second part –‘Will not rest till Majithia is arrested’ has nothing to do with th

      Sangharsh to Siyasat: Major tremors in Punjab’s electoral domain with farmers body entering arena Ground Zero Jagtar Singh   A new political formation under the banner of Sanyukat Samaj Morcha has finally emerged from the success of the historic farmers struggle started and led by Punjab that was the most peaceful and the longest at the global level in recent history. It was a struggle that in essence was for the protection of the rights of the consumers and save the people from the corporate greed, not just the survival of farms and the farmers. In Punjab, it had assumed the proportions of mass struggle involving almost every section. In Punjab, the success of this struggle has been perceived as victory over Delhi. A section of the farmer organisations that commanded this struggle, 22 to be precise, has decided to take the struggle to yet another arena. This Morcha has decided to take plunge in the forthcoming Assembly elections in Punjab due in February 22. The

      Punjab seems to be entering into critical domain with incidents of sacrilege and bomb blast   Ground Zero Jagtar Singh April 24: Cow heads were placed in Katra Ahluwalia and Bazar Kathian, Amritsar. April 27: Two carcasses of calves were found in Kharar area. April 28: Virendra of Daily Partap and Ramesh Chander of Hind Samachar group in Jalandhar received parcels containing cow ears. April 30: Three packets of cigarettes recovered from a gurdwara in Tarn Taran. May 1: Packet of Bidis found in a gurdwara at Anandpur Sahib. May 1: Cigarette packets found in the Golden Temple complex. It is that it happened about four decades back in 1982 sparking fire in Punjab that raged for about a decade and a half that consumed more than 40,000 lives including that of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Akali Dal chief Sant Harchand Singh Longowal and Chief Minister Beant Singh. Now come to 2021. Sacrilege at the Golden Temple (Darbar Sahib) has been followed by a powerfu

    Majitha case: Punjab’s electoral narrative getting dictated by unfinished agenda of 2017 polls Ground Zero Jagtar Singh The shocking incident of sacrilege at Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) and the registration of a case against powerful   Akali leader and former minister Bikram Singh Majitha relating to drug smuggling have revived the very issues on which the 2017 Assembly election was contested. Those very issues seem to be returning to the centre stage in the run up to the February 2022 polls. Interestingly, Punjab’s electoral discourse has rarely been centred around the issues of survival   and development. Punjab was at one time amongst the most advanced states in the country with well developed infrastructure before its rating started down-sliding. About a month earlier, the issues that were coming to the fore related to survival with political parties out-competing each other by offering to the voters various concessions including cheap to free power and the like. I

  Sacrilege at Golden Temple: Deeper design to destabilise Punjab again Ground Zero Jagtar Singh   What happened in the Golden Temple (Darbar Sahib) complex on Saturday evening is not only shocking but also unprecedented. Never before any person in recorded history has scaled the railing after it was erected, to reach Guru Granth Sahib. The person concerned jumped over and picked up the historical sword donated by Maharaja Ranjit Singh that is placed in front of the Guru Granth Sahib leaving the devotees and the staff shell shocked. The man was subsequently beaten to death. Even before this heinous crime of desecration was sinking in, yet another incident of sacrilege at a gurdwara in Kapurthala district was reported in the morning today. The accused was caught and interrogated and the video is now viral. He was incoherent in his replies. He was killed by the devotees in the presence of the police. Lynching is abominable and can’t be justified. It is a matter of cause and effect. Earli

    Shiromani Akali Dal must maintain balance between Panth and Punjabiat   Ground Zero Jagtar Singh The century old Shiromani Akali Dal is not only the first regional party in the country but can also rightly claim to be the first party in India of that time that included the present Pakistan and Bangladesh to be the first political formation constituted by the Indians and for the Indians to voice the concerns of the Sikhs at every level. The first party that is Congress was founded by British national Allan Octavian Hume to act as a bridge between the rulers and the ruled. The Akali Dal that organised its 101 st anniversary conference at Killi Chahalan near Moga yesterday was born out of struggle for the liberation of gurdwaras and the tradition to launch struggles continued on issues concerning Punjab and the Panth till some years back. At one level, the Killi Chahalan conference is characterised by ideological continuity that hammers federalism and socio-cultural d

      Much hyped design of Congress in Punjab to exploit drug cases for electoral gains flops Ground Zero Jagtar Singh   The much-hyped cases relating to smuggling of drugs in Punjab seem to have turned into albatross around the neck of the ruling Congress in the state. This hype has been due to the name of Akali Dal leader and former minister Bikram Singh Majithia having come to be linked with one such case following mention by an accused Jagdish Singh Bhola in the court premises in Mohali some years back. However, no other evidence has ever surfaced against him till now. This is one of the two cases on which  electoral narrative of the Congress has been anchored, the other being the sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib at Bargari in October 2015. The Congress in the run up to 2017 Assembly election had promised to take these two cases to the logical conclusion. These were the two cases that triggered revolt against Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh leading to his replacement by low profi

      Punjab’s electoral discourse getting focused on scheduled caste and Hindu domains   Ground Zero Jagtar Singh   Punjab electoral discourse is witnessing a characteristic shift from the Sikh religio-political dominated discourse to the scheduled castes and Hindu domains based electoral discourse. Punjab’s political discourse has always been dominated by the Sikh religio-political discourse historically that impacts the electoral discourse too. Efforts are now on to work out new permutations and combinations to construct differently designed strategies as reaction to the accidental decision of the Congress to replace Capt Capt Amarinder Singh with Charanjit Singh Channi from the marginalised sections whose main thrust has been to present himself as common man’s chief minister. That strategy worked initially but now distortions have started cropping up with cases like brutal lathicharge on protesters at Mansa at a function attended by the Chief Minister. The succe

     Impact of return of victors from Delhi on Punjab polls to be visible in coming days Ground Zero Jagtar Singh   The impact of the return of the victors from Delhi on the political discourse in Punjab is likely to start emerging in the coming days as the campaign for February 2022 Assembly polls picks up momentum. The only major party in Punjab   that directly felt the impact of the farmers struggle   at the early stage itself is the Shiromani Akali Dal,   the party that used to be the most entrenched in the peasantry and would be identified as the articulator of the concerns mainly of the rural Punjab. The Shiromani Akali Dal has been representing the Panth and the peasantry and it was perhaps this very reason that it felt the impact the most. The Akali Dal broke its about a quarter century old alliance with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party within days of the adoption of the three farm bills in September 2020 that now stands withdrawn under intense pressure from the

    Historic victory of Punjab driven longest, most peaceful, farmers national struggle for survival   Ground Zero Jagtar Singh   The farmers have finally won their historic struggle for survival, the longest in India since 1947 and unprecedented in recent history at the global level. That the massive united fight by farmers was against the government at the Centre led by Narendra Modi, the Strong Man who rose from the ranks of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh rooted in ideology of Hindutva, is a small dimension of this multifarious struggle that provides new hope to the people fighting for their rights not only in India but on this entire planet. This struggle that originated in Punjab and spread to the entire country through Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand, is multi-dimensional with far-reaching consequences on the political economy at one level and the social dynamics on the other. The empowerment of women is one of the most important dimensions of thi