E-Paper
Punjab assembly polls: BJP plans come a cropper, reduced to just two seats
All attempts by BJP to mark its presence in Punjab assembly polls come a cropper with the party miserably failing to take off its plans for the state as they could win only two seats out of 73
All desperate attempts by the BJP to mark its presence in Punjab come a cropper with the party miserably failing to take off its plans for the state as they could win only two seats out of 73 contested on its symbol.
This is BJP’s worst-ever performance in the past five assembly polls even as its vote share in the state increased to around 6.60% as compared to the previous assembly polls.
In 2017 assembly polls, the BJP had won three seats when it had contested in alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) with a vote share of 5%.
The party’s face-saving wins came in the form of its state president Ashwani Sharma, who won from Pathankot and Jungi Lal Mahajan from Mukerian.
Even party’s core vote bank of Urban and Hindu population did not support the BJP in its strongholds in Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Ferozepur, Pathankot and Ludhiana and party’s stalwarts, including former ministers Manoranjan Kalia and Tikshan Sud, fared poor third whereas former Union minister Vijay Sampla came fourth in Phagwara.
Party’s sitting MLAs Arun Narang from Abohar stood third and its two-time sitting MLA Dinesh Babbu lost from party’s bastion Sujanpur.
Leaders poached from other parties, including former minister Rana Gurmit Sodhi and sitting Congress MLA Fateh Jung Bajwa, lost badly. Moga MLA Harjot Kamal, who had switched to the BJP after being denied a ticket by the Congress, had to forfeit his security.
Among 73 seats it contested on its symbol, the party remained runner-up on 15 seats.
Among the seats it contested for the first time on its own, the party managed to get over 10,000 votes in SAS Nagar, Kharar, Khanna, Fatehgarh Sahib, Dera Bassi and Bathinda. The Balluana seat is the only new constituency contested by the party where it stood second.
Party’s issues of ‘nationalism’ and ‘national security’ found no resonance among its core vote bank and its attempts to get support of Hindu community by using ‘Modi factor’ also failed as most of the Urban and Hindu community vote areas went to AAP.
Party’s attempts to exploit the Modi factor by holding Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s back-to back three physical rallies also failed to yield results and its idea of getting support from religious deras failed miserably as well.
Insiders reveal that party strategist also ‘over-calculated’ former chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh and Akali leader Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa.
“By joining hands with Amarinder, the BJP did the blunder of carrying his four-and-a-half-year anti-incumbency as a chief minister on the party’s shoulder and failed to make a strong connect with its urban vote bank,” a senior leader said.
Party general secretary Subhash Sharma said due to the farmer agitation, the party hardly had any time left for the preparation for the assembly polls.
“People have made up their mind to rout the traditional parties SAD and the Congress. Maybe they didn’t find the BJP as a strong alternate because we were contesting alone for the first time,” said Sharma.
