Punjab Congress Chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring resigns

Amarinder Singh Raja Warring has resigned as the Punjab Congress president.The development comes amid a long-standing feud between Warring and former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi over the party's leadership in the state ahead of the assembly elections early next year. Warring, who became the Ludhiana MP in 2024, had taken charge of the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee in April 2022, just after a deeply fractious Punjab Congress faced a massive drubbing from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). The fractiousness never really subsided; it peaked in recent months.
Factions had emerged, with Punjab Congress leaders and MLAs siding with either of the two leaders and making a beeline to the central leadership in an apparent show of strength. The differences between Channi and Warring had emerged as a major source of friction in the Punjab Congress ahead of the 2027 Assembly elections.
The dispute intensified in June 2026, when the Congress high command constituted a three-member observers' panel comprising Ajay Maken, Meenakshi Natarajan and Bhajan Lal Jatav to assess the party's organisational situation in Punjab. The panel consulted around 67 party leaders, including MPs, MLAs, former ministers and district-level functionaries. According to reports, a majority of those consulted had backed Channi for the post of Punjab Congress president.
Assembly elections in Punjab are due in early 2027. The Congress faces the AAP government led by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann. A potential alliance between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) remains in the works, and the Akali Dal (Waris Punjab De) of jailed MP Amritpal Singh is in the fray as well.