The Captain’s ship runs aground

What started out as an all-out fight against corruption in high places, however, soon degenerated into a single-point agenda of putting his arch rival, Parkash Singh Badal, behind bars and registering cases against ministers of the earlier government. The chief minister met with conspicuous success in this. He succeeded in registering cases against at least nine ministers in the previous regime and, after a long spell of suspense, managed to put Badal and his son, Sukhbir Badal, in prison. While there was some substance to the charge that the Badals had amassed wealth in the country, the government could not produce any evidence to substantiate its charge that the Badal family had stashed away wealth to the tune of Rs 3,500 crore abroad. The case is at present in the courts and both parties are girding up for a long, hard legal battle.

Unfortunately, besides these cases, the chief minister has very little to his credit. Two years down the line and Amarinder Singh has not only lost the goodwill he had gained by occupying the moral high ground against Sidhu and the Badals on the issue of corruption, he now finds himself under siege from party dissidents led by Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, who has now been made his deputy in a bid to manage the situation. What made things worse for him is his legendary inaccessibility. His laidback lifestyle and excessive dependence on a coterie of loyal officers has only added to growing public resentment.

Even his knight-in-shining-armour image has taken a beating. His government took a series of steps in blatant disregard of procedures and laws. The man who took credit for nabbing Sidhu, appointed DSPs in the state police from the sports category, because they happened to be close associates. One of them was the son of his advisor, B.I.S. Chahal. Charges have also been flung at the chief minister’s son, Raninder Singh, for allegedly transferring money out of the country. Although the charges were denied and little evidence of their veracity has surfaced, the chief minister made it a point to arrest a senior and respected IAS officer, G.S. Pirzada, who he believed was the person responsible for leaking this information to the media.

The latest issue to cast a shadow over the Punjab government has been its auctioning of liquor vends. The process, in some case, was over in a matter of three minutes, resulting in the high court having to step in and cancel the auction. Not entirely surprisingly, the main beneficiary of these “three-minute auctions” was none other than the main Congress fund provider, Ponty Chadha, who is believed to be very close to the chief minister.

So far, luck has been on Amarinder Singh’s side. He has managed to keep his chiefministerial chair because the Congress high command did not wish to rock the boat in the state with general elections on the horizon.

But this is just a matter of time. From all evidence, once these elections are over, things could change very dramatically for the flamboyant Amarinder Singh.