Chandigarh: Harpal of Balad Kalan village near Bhawanigarh in Sangrur district of Punjab is quite vocal when asked whom he would vote for this time. “Neither the Akalis nor the Congress ever cared for landless farmers like me. I will vote for change,” he told The Wire.
Does Charanjit Singh Channi – first Dalit chief minister of Punjab and Congress candidate – represent change for him?
Harpal, who himself belongs to the Dalit community and Mazhabi Sikh sub-caste, said that Channi is no different. “Two months ago, I was part of a jatha (march) that held a protest near Channi’s house in Kharar over pending demands of Dalits in Punjab. Instead [of listening to us], the police used batons and sent us back,” he said.
Gurcharan Singh, a farmer from Siyonti village in Pathankot district’s Sujanpur area, told The Wire that this constituency was a stronghold of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But their promises remained unfulfilled even as the saffron party was in alliance with the Akalis. “We are unhappy with all the traditional patties this time,” he added.
Ahead of the Punjab polls on February 20, a narrative is making a cross-section of people believe that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) that has been confronting traditional parties with a focus on its ‘Delhi model’ is leading on public perception.
The party has claimed to have given a facelift to health and education in the national capital where it came to power in 2014. It has promised to replicate the same model in Punjab, if voted to power.
Also read: Three Reasons Why Punjab Is in a State of Political Churn
However, not everyone is convinced of AAP. A farmer Gurdeep Singh of Bajak village near Bathinda city, the stronghold of the Akali Dal, told The Wire that AAP is nowhere in their area. The main fight here is between the Congress and Akali Dal.
But another farmer from the same village, Baldev Singh, said that voters certainly appeared divided on party lines, but they are equally concerned about development issues, thanks to the outcome of the farmers’ movement which made them question the parties ruling them so far.
After the reorganisation of Punjab in 1966, except two assembly elections in 1967 and 1969, Punjab voters never delivered a fractured mandate.
Even in the 2017 assembly elections, when AAP’s entry made the contest triangular for the first time, Punjab voted decisively for Congress.
The opinion polls last month, soon after the announcement of the dates for the Punjab assembly polls, predicted the fractured mandate, mainly because of the presence of as many as five players this time, with the BJP-Captain Amarinder-led front and farmers’ party as two new entrants.
Lately two opinion polls (check here and here) showed AAP within a striking range of forming the government but with a wafer-thin majority.
Delhi CM and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal with the party’s chief ministerial candidate Bhagwant Singh Mann ahead of Punjab polls, in Mohali, Tuesday, January 18, 2022. Photo: PTI
Political analyst and also former head of Punjabi University’s department of political science, Jamshed Ali Khan, told The Wire that he had little faith on the credibility of opinion polls, given that they had gone horribly wrong in 2012 as well as in the 2017 polls. Still, it reflects the changing mood to the extent that people are not very keen to vote for traditional parties. The poor performance of the incumbent Congress government has further fanned this feeling.
“In that narrative, AAP is certainly leading, which is a significant change,” he said.
However, AAP’s rivals, including SAD and Congress, argued that AAP was shown with a similar undercurrent in the 2017 elections as well, but it did not get more than 20 seats.
The Akalis are also targeting AAP as “outsiders having no vision for the state”.
Congress spokesperson Raj Veraka said, “They are fooling people with their fake Delhi model. Its bubble will burst like 2017 since they have no agenda.”
Also read: From ‘Only Sikh Can Be CM’ to ‘Why Not a Hindu’: Is Aap Trying to Polarise Punjab Polls?
What makes AAP different this time
Jamshed argued there was a reason why AAP lost in 2017 despite having a similar undercurrent.
First, Punjab voters still perceived Amarinder Singh, the then chief ministerial candidate of Congress, a likeable face due to his decent work as the chief minister in his first term between 2002-2007. He had carefully cultivated his personality as a strong leader by sending the Badals to jail and then terminated the water-sharing agreement with neighbouring Haryana.
“Faith on Amarinder played a huge role in negating AAP’s popularity in 2017. But there is no Amarinder factor this time. Amarinder Singh, who is now in alliance with the BJP, was discredited by his own party last September when he was forced to resign,” he said.
He further said that AAP has not exactly been strong political force in the last few years. In fact, the party has been in a major crisis ever since the last polls. First, half of its MLAs deserted the party. Second, there has been no change in the party’s leadership except that Bhagwant Mann was made the chief ministerial candidate – an obvious decision considering that he was the party’s most famous face in 2017 too. AAP is basically thriving upon the negative votes against traditional parties, he said.
“If people will vote for AAP, it is because of their unhappiness with the Congress and Akali Dal. Even BJP and Amarinder Singh, too, fall in the same category,” he added.
“We have a group of retired political science teachers and scholars who did a survey in some selected constituencies across Punjab where it was found that the impact of AAP in the past was confined only to the Malwa region, which is now seen in Majha and Doaba too. If it stays like this, Punjab will be heading for a change,” he said.
Malwa is the largest political region of Punjab, with 69 out of 117 seats coming from 15 districts, while remaining 25 and 23 from Doaba and Majha areas.
Treading cautiously
When AAP was barely two years old, it shocked both Congress and Akali Dal when four of its candidates became members of parliament in the 2014 general election, all from Malwa region.
In the 2017 assembly polls, it came as a cropper but still managed to win 20 MLAs, 18 of them again came from the Malwa region that was once the stronghold of the Akalis.
Since then, seven of its MLAs have joined Congress while three left the party.
The party had a very poor performance in the 2021 civic body polls, registering a mere 3% vote share against 24% vote share it had in 2014 general elections.
Yet, many feel that AAP has an advantage as it does not carry with it the baggage of unresolved issues and corruption charges that traditional parties face right now.
Political analyst Jagroop Singh Sekhon said that this is precisely the reason why AAP is centering its whole focus in one sentence: “Ek Moka AAP Nu (Give an opportunity to AAP)”.
In 2017, AAP’s fiddling with Sikh extremists went against the party. The other reason was Captain Amarinder’s popularity. It was followed by the Bhatinda blast, days before voting and there was a change in the whole election narrative, he said.
However, this time AAP is better placed and cautious too of not committing any blunder, he said.
“AAP is still unable to clear their stand on several unsolved issues like the water-sharing agreement. The latest is the release of Sikh prisoner where Delhi’s AAP government is also one of the parties in the case of Davinder Pal Singh Bhullar, a death convict in the 1993 Delhi bomb blast case. Yet, it is still in reckoning mainly due to its disenchantment against traditional parties,” he said.
To say that the game is lost for traditional parties is not entirely true. The impact of Channi as the chief ministerial candidate is not being entirely negated, even though AAP is aggressively targeting him over his alleged involvement in illegal sand mining after the arrest of his nephew.
Another factor that is often spoken about in private talks is how Congress and the Akali Dal-BJP alliance ganged up together to stop AAP in 2017.
Congress state chief Navjot Singh Sidhu spoke numerous times on how Amarinder and the Akalis had a tactical understanding ever since the beginning of the Congress government.
Jamshed Khan believes that while it is difficult to have a similar pact this time, since the current Congress leadership is different, there are already talks in political circles on some hidden tactical understanding between the Akali Dal and the BJP-led alliance in order to sabotage AAP’s chances. Only time will tell if such hidden pacts bear fruit like last time or if people remain swayed by anger against traditional political parties, he added.