ਚਰਨਜੀਤ ਸਿੰਘ ਚੰਨੀਚਰਨਜੀਤ ਸਿੰਘ ਚੰਨੀ

Early life in Makrauna Kalan, handball and a long education

Charanjit Singh Channi was born on 15 March 1963 in Makrauna Kalan, a village near Chamkaur Sahib in Rupnagar district, into a Ramdasia Sikh family. His father, S. Harsa Singh, served as sarpanch of the village and later as a Block Samiti member, so public work was part of the household from the start. Channi was a sportsman before he was a politician: he played handball to a high standard, represented Panjab University three times, won a gold medal at an inter university sports meet and played at national level. His formal education ran alongside and after his early politics. He studied at Sri Guru Gobind Singh College in Chandigarh and took BA and LLB degrees from Panjab University, then an MBA from the I. K. Gujral Punjab Technical University at Jalandhar. Much later, in 2023, Panjab University awarded him a PhD in political science at its 70th convocation, for a thesis on the Congress party's central organisation and its electoral strategies in Lok Sabha elections since 2004, supervised by Professor Emanual Nahar. Few Indian politicians have written a doctorate on their own party. Channi is one of them.

Kharar council and the road to Chamkaur Sahib

His political career began at the municipal level in Kharar, the SAS Nagar town where he had been schooled. He served three terms as a municipal councillor and two terms as president of the Kharar municipal council, a post he first took in 2002, handling the everyday civic business of a fast growing town on the edge of Chandigarh and Mohali. In 2007 he stepped up to state politics and won the Chamkaur Sahib assembly seat as an independent candidate, defeating the Akali Dal's Satwant Kaur in the constituency that contains his home village. He joined the Indian National Congress in 2012 and held the seat as a Congress candidate that year, beating Jagmeet Kaur of the Akali Dal by 3,659 votes, then held it again in 2017 with a larger margin of 12,308 votes. Chamkaur Sahib, a reserved seat in the Puadh belt of Rupnagar district, became his unshakeable base: three straight terms across fifteen years.

Opposition leader and cabinet minister

In December 2015 the Congress made him leader of its legislature party in Punjab, which made him leader of the opposition in the assembly, facing the Akali Dal and BJP government of Parkash Singh Badal. He held the post until November 2016, using it to attack the government on unemployment, drugs and farm distress, and to build a statewide profile beyond his own constituency. When the Congress won the 2017 election, he entered Captain Amarinder Singh's cabinet with the portfolios of technical education and industrial training, employment generation, and tourism and cultural affairs. The technical education charge fitted a politician from a family and community for whom government institutes and skilled jobs are the ladder up, and he remained a minister until the government itself fell apart in September 2021.

How did Charanjit Singh Channi become chief minister of Punjab?

In September 2021, after months of open revolt inside the Punjab Congress, Amarinder Singh resigned as chief minister on 18 September. The party's choice of successor surprised many: on 20 September 2021 Channi was sworn in as the 16th chief minister of Punjab, with Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa and Om Parkash Soni as his deputies. He was the first Dalit, and the first Dalit Sikh, to hold the post, in a state where Dalits form the largest share of population of any Indian state. That, analysts wrote at the time, was the point: the Congress wanted a chief minister whose own life spoke to that electorate. His five months in office were a rush of announcements aimed at that promise: action promised on the sacrilege cases, electricity dues of water works schemes waived, regularisation promised for Class D employees, a cap of Rs 5.50 per cubic foot on sand prices with a Rs 25,000 reward for video proof of illegal mining, a state commission for the general category, and free bus travel for students. In his own constituency he inaugurated the Dastaan-e-Shahadat theme park at Chamkaur Sahib in November 2021. On 5 January 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's cavalcade was held up by protesting farmers on a flyover in Ferozepur district; the BJP alleged a security lapse, and Channi denied that any lapse had occurred.

Defeat in 2022 and the sand mining case

The Congress named Channi its chief ministerial face for the February 2022 election, campaigning on the slogan Sada Channi, Sada CM, our Channi, our chief minister. It did not work. The Aam Aadmi Party won 92 of 117 seats, the Congress fell to 18, and Channi himself lost both seats he contested: Chamkaur Sahib, his seat of fifteen years, to the AAP's Dr Charanjit Singh by 7,942 votes, and Bhadaur to Labh Singh Ugoke by 37,558 votes. He resigned on 11 March 2022, and Bhagwant Mann succeeded him on 16 March. The campaign had also been shadowed by an Enforcement Directorate case. On 18 January 2022 the ED raided premises linked to his nephew Bhupinder Singh, known as Honey, in an alleged illegal sand mining money laundering investigation, and said it had seized more than Rs 10 crore in cash. Honey was arrested on the night of 3 to 4 February and was named in the ED charge sheet filed on 31 March 2022; Channi was not named in that charge sheet. The Congress called the arrest political and timed to pressure a Dalit chief minister. On 13 April 2022 the ED questioned Channi for over six hours in Jalandhar. He confirmed on social media that he had attended, answered the questions put to him and had not been asked to return.

Jalandhar MP: what is Charanjit Singh Channi doing now?

Channi's comeback came through Parliament. In the 2024 general election he contested the reserved Jalandhar Lok Sabha seat for the Congress and won by one of the largest margins in Punjab, polling 390,053 votes and defeating the BJP's Sushil Kumar Rinku by 175,993 votes. He took his seat on 4 June 2024. In the Lok Sabha he chairs the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Food Processing, a brief that puts a Punjab voice at the head of the committee that scrutinises farm policy, and he is a member of the Congress Working Committee, the party's highest decision making body. He remains an active Punjab politician as well as an MP: in October 2026 he toured an alleged illegal mining site in Ropar district and accused the AAP state government of patronising illegal mining, charges the government side routinely denies. Married to Dr Kamaljit Kaur, a medical professional, since 1991, and the father of two sons, Channi's rise from a village sarpanch's house in Makrauna Kalan to the chief minister's office, and then to Parliament after losing everything in between, is one of the most unusual career arcs in modern Punjab politics.