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Punjab polls: AAP’s Chandigarh surge sets alarm bells ringing for SAD, Cong
The AAP’s surge in Chandigarh, the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana, will serve as a much-needed morale booster for the party
CHANDIGARH : The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is gung-ho in Punjab after its scintillating debut in the Chandigarh municipal corporation on Monday where it trumped the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress.
AAP national convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and party’s Punjab unit chief Bhagwant Mann, who both campaigned in the municipal polls in Chandigarh, lost no time in terming its 14 seats out of 35 to emerge as the single-largest party as a “sign of the coming change” in Punjab where the state elections are just weeks away.
Much-needed morale booster
The AAP’s surge in Chandigarh, the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana, will serve as a much-needed morale booster for the party. The AAP had made a stunning debut in Punjab in 2014 winning four of the 13 Lok Sabha seats and took the number two position in the 2017 state polls, but then failed to meet heady expectations as it plunged into disarray. The party is now slowly trying to get its act together. Helping it find traction is a raft of freebies announced by Kejriwal and the campaign for “ek mauka” (chance).
At the same time, it is also an alarm bell for the two traditional players, the Congress and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), which are beset with their own set of problems. The ruling Congress is hamstrung by internal squabbling, particularly the tussle between chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi and Punjab Congress president Navjot Singh Sidhu over the chief ministerial face of the party. The Akalis, on the other hand, are worried about the sacrilege and drug issues, which proved to be their nemesis in 2017, dominating the poll narrative, besides the impact of 22 farmer organisations’ decision to jump into the poll ring on its pockets of support in peasantry.
Win not an indicator of public mood in Punjab
The win could not have come at a more opportune time for the party, but the attempts to project it as a sign of change in Punjab seem far-fetched. Despite their strong links, Chandigarh, seen by many as a microcosm of Punjab, cannot be taken as the bellwether of the agrarian state.
Ashutosh Kumar, a professor of political science at Panjab University, says that the Chandigarh win will send a strong message to Punjab because its (city’s) soul is very much Punjabi, but it cannot be construed as an indicator of the public mood there. “People of Punjab are looking of an alternative. If the AAP wants to put up a strong challenge, it has to project a good CM-face and avoid the mistakes of 2017,” he adds.
Sanyukt Samaj Morcha a challenge for AAP
In the previous state elections, besides micro-managing the campaign from Delhi, the party had not named the CM-face and was targeted by its rivals for trying to impose “outsider Kejriwal” on the state. Again, Kejriwal and his team are steering the election campaign. Another challenge for the party is the emergence of the Sanyukt Samaj Morcha (SSM), a political party floated by 22 farmer organisations, which has thrown its hat in the ring.
Guru Nanak Dev University’s former head of political science professor Jagrup Singh Sekhon said the AAP was beginning to get support in rural area as an alternative to people fed up with traditional parties, but it will now have to compete with the SSM which has a strong presence at booth level in every village. Given the challenges it faces, the AAP will need much more than a booster dose to revive the groundswell of support it had around the same time five years ago and that helped it make an impact in its first electoral outing in the state polls.
