Ticking Bombast

The Congress and the AAP go to war yet again, this time over imaginary explosives in Punjab.

Punjab

If India’s opposition alliance were a circus, then Punjab would be its clown car. Into it pile the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress (supposed allies in the grand-sounding, but barely functional INDIA bloc) only to emerge flinging bricks at one another. The latest scuffle involves hand grenades, political vendetta and a level of melodrama that would shame a Bollywood soap.

It began when Congress veteran and Leader of Opposition in Punjab, Partap Singh Bajwa, dropped what he presumably thought was a rhetorical bomb in a TV interview: “50 bombs have reached Punjab. Eighteen have exploded; 32 are yet to go off.” One might think such a statement would prompt a high-level security response. Instead, it triggered something far more Punjabi: a full-blown slanging match.

AAP workers, always ready to protest with more zeal than perspective, took to the streets of Mohali demanding Bajwa’s arrest. Their contention was that he was either fearmongering or tacitly colluding with terrorists. The Punjab Police, proving that no metaphor goes unpunished, dutifully booked Bajwa under the Official Secrets Act, a move that, if nothing else, proved that irony is alive and well in the state.

The Congress, naturally, cried vendetta. Its state president, Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, accused Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann of orchestrating the FIR like a B-grade movie villain, complete with late-night swoops and dramatic declarations. Jairam Ramesh, Congress’s high priest of outrage, chimed in from Delhi to accuse the Mann government of being a “bundle of insecurity and incompetence.” It’s a description that unintentionally fits much of the INDIA alliance.

Bajwa, for his part, insists he was merely conveying a security tip from an anonymous source. He even filed a petition in the Punjab and Haryana High Court to quash the FIR, accusing the AAP regime of political vengeance and calling Punjab’s police force useless.

Meanwhile, Sunil Jakhar, Punjab BJP chief and part-time voice of reason, dubbed the whole affair a ‘fixed match’ between Congress and AAP, claiming that both parties were milking the situation to appear relevant. Whether or not the match was fixed, it certainly wasn’t subtle.

That both AAP and Congress are trying to bury each other alive in a state while still pretending to be comrades at the national level would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. This isn’t the first time the INDIA partners have acted more like warring cousins than allies. We got a sample of that in the crucial Delhi assembly elections earlier this year when the Congress, which performed dismally was gloating over the AAP being dethroned by the BJP.

If their antics in Delhi were the stuff of grade B soap opera, Punjab takes the cake: the drama, the FIRs, the press conferences - all over a metaphor gone rogue.

Voters might be forgiven for wondering if anyone is actually running the state. Law and order in Punjab has indeed frayed, with grenade attacks, drug seizures and cross-border smuggling on the rise. The AAP government’s answer is to lash out at critics. The Congress’s response is to play victim. And the only ones offering anything resembling adult supervision appear to be the BJP.

Jakhar said only the BJP could restore Punjab’s lost dignity, and that the Centre will not let anyone play with law and order. It is the kind of paternalistic rhetoric that would usually induce eye-rolls. But in a state where the ruling party and the opposition are busy suing and protesting each other, the bar is so low it’s subterranean.

As Punjab lurches from grenade jokes to legal drama, the real explosion may come at the ballot box when Punjab goes to polls in 2027. The INDIA alliance wants to take on Narendra Modi nationally. But if it can’t even stage a ceasefire in Punjab, one wonders what sort of coalition government it hopes to run - assuming, of course, it doesn’t implode before then.