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Chandigarh: A month ago, the appointment of former Punjab chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi as Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief was considered a near-certainty. So much so that many aspirants for other posts in the PCC had started reaching out to him or his close associates to lobby for themselves.

A month later, the appointment is yet to happen. The reason is the decision of the BJP to play a politically-smart move by appointing a Jat Sikh as its state unit chief, discarding a Hindu leader in the process. Compounding the Congress’s problem is the fact that the BJP and the Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal) are seen to be inching towards a pre-poll tie-up and appointment of a non-Jat may lead to counter-consolidation of Jat-Hindu voters.

While Dalits comprise almost 32% of the total voters in the state, it is the Jat Sikhs, much of them forming the backbone of the state’s agriculture sector, who are more politically muscled.

Now, as the race to appoint the next president of Punjab PCC enters the last stretch, two names seem to hold an edge over the other aspirants – former Chief Minister and current Lok Sabha MP from Jalandhar Channi and former Deputy Chief Minister and Congress MP from Gurdaspur Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa.

Some other aspirants like Leader of the Opposition (LoP) Pratap Singh Bajwa are also said to be in the reckoning but the final fight may whittle down between Channi........

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