Internal differences in the Punjab Congress are set to play out at the Rakhar Punya fair in Baba Bakala, Amritsar, on Friday. Former Baba Bakala MLA Santokh Singh Bhalaipur is organising the event, which is expected to turn into a show of strength by leaders opposed to the continuation of Amrinder Singh Raja Warring as the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) chief.A senior party leader said although it is an annual state-level event usually held by the PPCC, the PPCC is not organizing it this time. Instead, a separate event is being held for leaders opposing Warring.Bhalaipur told The Tribune that Warring and PPCC working president Sukhwinder Singh Danny have been invited to the event. “This event is for all party leader and not one particular group,” he added.The development comes ahead of Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi’s expected four-day visit to Punjab early next month. After landing in Amritsar, he is likely to lead a bus yatra through the Majha and Doaba regions, with all party leaders on board.Party insiders said the PPCC had made efforts to hold a single Congress event at Baba Bakala. However, leaders opposed to Warring did not agree and, at a meeting, decided to boycott events organised by him. They instead decided to hold a separate event without inviting the PPCC chief. Warring did not respond to calls made on his phone.The Baba Bakala event will be the fourth in a series of programmes in which former Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi, Gurdaspur MP Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa and other senior leaders have displayed their strength. The first was a parallel political event at Issru near Khanna on Independence Day (August 15), followed by a protest in Faridkot over the alleged scam in the pharmacist recruitment examination and a show of strength by the Channi camp at the coronation ceremony of newly elected Municipal Council president Ashok Sachdeva in Ferozepur.A senior party leader from Amritsar said holding a PPCC state-level event alongside the separate gathering would have caused embarrassment and created parallel stages.“The event where the PPCC chief and District Congress Committee presidents are not present shows fissures within the state unit. To avoid confrontation, the PPCC-appointed committee for the Baba Bakala event finally called off the official event,” said senior leaders.