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For AAP, Punjab bypoll victories comes as a much-needed midterm boost
The by-elections to four assembly seats were seen as a midterm litmus test for the AAP government in the state following its poor showing in the April-May parliamentary polls, where it won only three of the 13 Lok Sabha seats.
The Aam Aadmi Party’s emphatic victory in the assembly byelections in Punjab has come as a shot in the arm for chief minister Bhagwant Mann.
The by-elections to four assembly seats were seen as a midterm litmus test for the AAP government in the state following its poor showing in the April-May parliamentary polls, where it won only three of the 13 Lok Sabha seats. However, AAP triumphed in Gidderbaha, Dera Baba Nanak and Chabbewal assembly seats, wresting them from the Congress with significant margins for the first time.
The party had failed to win these three seats in the 2022 Punjab polls, despite its historic victory with 92 of the 117 seats in the state assembly. AAP lost the fourth seat, Barnala, which it won in the previous two elections, to the Congress by a narrow margin of 2,157 votes, largely due to rebellion in the district unit. The district unit chief contested independently after the party leadership overlooked his claim and gave the ticket to a close associate of Sangrur MP Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer, who had vacated this seat.
Though the loss in Barnala is a setback, the AAP’s overall strong showing in the bypolls came at a crucial time for the chief minister, who led the campaign and was joined by party convenor Arvind Kejriwal, amid growing rumblings within the ruling party regarding the grassroots perception about the state government’s working. Over the past three months, speculation has been rife about the central leadership’s tightening grip over the state’s governance following one-to-one meetings held by AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal with the cabinet ministers, senior officers, and municipal commissioners as well as a shake-up in the top echelons of the state administration, including the chief minister’s team, as part of a midterm course correction exercise.
Ashutosh Kumar, a political science professor at Panjab University, said that the AAP got the advantage of being the incumbent as was the trend witnessed in the general and byelection election results announced on Saturday in different states across the country. “The election results will provide a huge relief to the chief minister as well as silence his critics. The AAP central leadership will also like to showcase this success in Delhi where it is going to face an electoral test in three months,” he said.
During the elections, the ruling party faced challenging times due to a procurement crisis which sparked farmers protests over the tardy lifting of paddy stocks and mismanagement. The farmers had directed their ire at the state government, pushing it on back foot. However, the state authorities quickly got into action to manage the situation before it had any major political fallout for the ruling party.
