Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu has adopted a radical anti-system approach to promise a new dawn, trying to extricate the ruling party from the strong anti-incumbency sentiment that Amarinder Singh’s failure to deliver generated across the state.

While Sidhu’s rebellious personality is cut out for this role, even the situational logic supports the aggressive posturing that is mistaken as a diatribe against chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi. Though Sidhu is indisputably positioning himself as the most deserving claimant for the chief minister’s post by advertising his “Punjab model”, his politics is primarily aimed at dissociating the Congress from the liabilities of Amarinder’s tenure.

Sidhu is speaking a language no ruling party representative can afford. Boldly condemning the Amarinder regime for “failed promises” and unholy compromises with the mafia, he is selling the dream of a “new dawn” after the “darkest night”. He takes credit for the FIR registered against the suspected drug kingpin Bikramjit Majithia, the minister in Akali-BJP regime who is absconding now, while conceding that “politician-police-drug mafia” nexus had not been broken yet.

He is saying at public meetings that everybody was busy gobbling up profits that the illicit drug trade accrued while declaring: “Either Sidhu survives in politics or the mafia survives.”

He also refers to the transport and sand mafia, while talking about the discredited Akali-BJP regime, which the Congress failed to dismantle in the last four-and-half years. He takes care to hail Channi’s good intentions and his resolve to take the fight to the finish, laying the entire blame on former chief minister Amarinder Singh. He has been saying that no work gets done without a bribe, despite the Congress being in power, and vows to smash this rotten system.

While he clearly seeks to portray the “new Congress” as a different party under Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, he is highlighting the message that the BJP, which tormented the farmers, had aligned with a chief minister who didn’t act against the mafia. He describes Amarinder as an unethical leader who was armtwisted by the BJP to protect the mafia that looted Punjab.

He alleges the Akali leadership was interested in their illegal “dhandha” (business), thus discrediting half of the opposition in the state. He targets AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal as “untrustworthy”, one who fools people with freebies and false promises and who has appeared at election time for power while Sidhu was devoted to Punjab. Sidhu might have created some unease within the Congress by his belligerence but he has succeeded to a great extent in occupying the Opposition mind-space by projecting himself as the real reformer.

While his clean image accords legitimacy to his bluster, he doesn’t forget to encash it with such lofty rhetoric as: “You will feel the shock of 440 volt if you raise a finger at Sidhu’s integrity.” Frequently using symbols of Punjabi pride — from Guru Nanak to Bhagat Singh — he portrays himself as a leader who lives and dies for the state’s welfare while his critics had mortgaged Punjab to the mafia. Surprisingly, even the voters don’t appear inclined to tie the Congress down to Amarinder’s legacy, thanks to Sidhu’s grandstanding and the BJP’s dubious strategy of embracing him without a cooling-off period.

Interestingly, Sidhu’s much-touted Punjab model has nothing new to offer. While he is selling Panchayati Raj, the 73rd Constitution amendment as the panacea against corruption, he claims the resources for his plans will come by whittling down theft and loot. While he condemns Kejriwal’s promise of Rs 1000 per month to every woman as freebie, he offers Rs 2000 and eight free gas cylinders and calls it empowerment.

He says the Congress women’s empowerment plan is to incentivize education; Rs 5000 for passing class 5th, Rs 10,000 for passing class 10 and Rs 15,000 for passing class 12th. After that, college going girls will get a scooty and a laptop, the promise copied from Priyanka’s UP-model. The Congress also promised to open a skill development centre for women in every district, an interest-free loan of Rs two lakh to woman entrepreneurs and a separate women-commando force in every police station.