Chandigarh: The Punjab Congress leadership row showed no signs of abating on Sunday, with former minister Razia Sultana’s husband, Mohammad Mustafa, urging the party high command to revisit its July 1 decision to retain Amrinder Singh Raja Warring as state unit chief.In a post on X, a day after AICC Punjab affairs in-charge Bhupesh Baghel concluded his six-day peace exercise, Mustafa said the gathering of senior leaders at Congress MLA Rana Gurjeet Singh’s residence reflected widespread dissatisfaction with Warring’s leadership rather than support for any particular leader.“I will withhold my personal opinion on his continuation, but the Congress party owes it to its loyal cadres to revisit the decision of July 1,” wrote Mustafa, a former Punjab DGP-rank officer. He said any review should be based on “proven capability, competence, consistency, a solid track record over the past five years and, crucially, an absolute absence of baggage”.Rejecting reports that the meeting was aimed at projecting former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi as the next Punjab Congress chief, Mustafa said, “No one attended yesterday’s meeting to support any specific leader. The overwhelming, deafening theme of the huddle was: ‘Remove Raja, bring anyone’.”He argued that if the Congress was serious about returning to power in Punjab, “a review is not just an option — it is an imperative”.At the same time, Mustafa credited Baghel with restoring the authority of the Congress high command. He said reports suggesting the AICC leader had failed to resolve the crisis were “farther from the truth”.“The sudden climb-down and the 180-degree turn in the tone and tenor of every leader present was solely due to the ‘Baghel effect’. Baghel very successfully re-established the authority of the high command,” he wrote.Mustafa claimed that 92 of the 117 Assembly constituency in-charges, including 14 of the 15 MLAs holding those responsibilities, attended the meeting physically or virtually. He also claimed that four of the party’s seven MPs, including one who extended support over the phone, backed the gathering.Taking a swipe at Warring, Mustafa remarked: “Congress and its well-wishers should indeed thank Raja for achieving the impossible — uniting all factions under one banner.”
