Senior Congress leader and former Punjab chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi said on Sunday that he had raised the demand for social justice at all forums within his party and outside without any reference to any particular caste or creed.
Referring to a meeting held at the Punjab Congress Bhawan in Chandigarh on Saturday by the Scheduled Caste (SC) department of the party, Channi said he did not raise allegations against any particular caste or community but demanded that Dalits should get their due.
“I have always stood by our Jat Sikh brothers and sisters as well as other castes and community members, whether it be with regard to damages suffered in floods or with regard to FIRs registered against them on unfair allegations. The main issue is that the Dalit community should get appropriate representation in society. It is not about social engineering, rather it is about social justice,” he said.
Saturday’s meeting was chaired by Rajinder Gautam, national chairman of the Congress’s SC department. Sudhir Chowdhary, coordinator of the party’s SC department in Haryana, was also present.
The former CM is said to have complained on the occasion that Dalit leaders of the party were being sidelined and that they were expected to do all the work for the 2027 Assembly elections, while they had been ignored in crucial appointments.
Channi is learnt to have stressed that the Dalit representation in crucial appointments should be in proportion to their numbers in the state.
It is learnt that the party high command is about to begin a series of meetings in New Delhi to finalise the election committee and campaign committee for the Assembly polls.
Channi is widely tipped to get an important role in the run-up to the Assembly polls. The party is also expected to fine-tune the representation of Dalit and Hindu community leaders in the crucial leadership positions, keeping an eye on the outreach being attempted by the ruling AAP and the BJP.
