Last year, when Navjot Singh Sidhu went hammer and tongs at Captain Amarinder Singh, the then Chief Minister of Punjab, accusing him of inaction on the sacrilege issue and being unable to control the drug mafia, Pradesh Congress Committee chief Sunil Jakhar maintained a dignified silence. Refusing to be drawn into the game of name-calling, he said his thing quietly, gently. His word though was lost in the din of the daily exchanges between Sidhu and the Captain. Surprisingly, it was not Amarinder Singh whom Sidhu displaced but Jakhar, despite the latter having led the Congress to victory in the 2017 election. Shortly afterwards, Jakhar was made the campaign committee chief. Jakhar—the son of former Lok Sabha Speaker Balram Jakhar, a former MP from Gurdaspur and MLA from Abohar—frankly admits the shortcomings of the party on the issues of drugs and sacrilege but claims that the Congress did better than ever before in the preceding five years. Disapproving of the tactics of some Congress leaders seeking re-election on the basis of the 111 days of Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi’s government, Jakhar insists that his party’s biggest achievements have been restoring communal harmony in the State and improving the infrastructure for school education. One early morning, as he criss-crossed Punjab, balancing the interests and demands of different factions of the party, Jakhar took the time to speak to Frontline . Excerpts from the interview: The agenda for the party is taking everybody along. All these people are fragmenting society. We want to take everybody along. We want betterment. We have brought Punjab back on track after five years of slogging it out. When we took over, not just the economy but the social fabric had been ripped apart. There was the sacrilege issue, the drugs issue … threatening Punjab. We have not been able to clinch those issues, but you can see the intent; we are working on it. I think we need time to fix it. It will be another chance, a continuation. The job which was started in 2017 will be fulfilled.
Sunil Jakhar, the Congress campaign chief in Punjab, declares: ‘We have successfully steered Punjab back on course…’
