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Lok Sabha election 2019: Close contest as Chandigarh goes to poll in seventh phase
Four-time former lawmaker and Congress candidate Pawan Kumar Bansal and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) sitting member of Parliament Kirron Kher are locked in a tight contest in the Chandigarh parliamentary constituency.
Chandigarh is set to witness a triangular contest on May 19 when more than six lakh voters will cast their ballot in the seventh and last phase of the Lok Sabha election.
Four-time former lawmaker and Congress candidate Pawan Kumar Bansal and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) sitting member of Parliament Kirron Kher are locked in a tight contest in the Chandigarh parliamentary constituency.
The Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP’s) Harmohan Dhawan makes the third contender in the fight in the lone Lok Sabha seat in the Union territory.
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Despite Pawan Bansal’s formidable record, the Congress lost to the BJP in 2014 amid a Modi wave. The grand old party has won seven times in the last 13 Lok Sabha elections held in Chandigarh.
Political experts including Muhammad Khalid, who teaches political science at Panjab University, suggest the general election this year is different from the last polls.
“The AAP proved to be voter cutter in 2014. But, it peaked with the Punjab state assembly elections. Also, as in the last elections, issues like railgate are not fresh in the voters’ memory,” said Muhammad.
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Another political analyst, who didn’t want to be named, said, “A lot hinges on how the Modi factor plays out in these elections.”
The Congress is looking to wrest back the Chandigarh seat as it banks on the political acumen of former Union minister Bansal. Having been the winning candidate in four out of seven Congress victories, Bansal is exploiting the anti-incumbency factor against Kher and the ruling NDA government.
A newcomer and para-dropped only three weeks before the 2014 polls, actor-turned-politician Kirron Kher defeated Bansal by nearly 70,000 votes.
Vouching for her own performance in the last five years, Kher contends that the Modi wave is strong enough this year as well to ensure her victory. Kher is also pitting her “clean” image against the “corruption tainted” image of her opponents.
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In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Bansal could get only 13,000 more votes than the AAP’s Gul Panag, who was placed third. The AAP candidate ate into Bansal’s traditional vote bank in the rehabilitated colonies and slums as she touched 1.08 lakh votes to Bansal’s 1.21 lakh.
This time around too, the AAP’s Harmohan Dhawan is hoping to better his party’s performance of 2014 against the odds. The AAP is a fraction of itself since the last elections. It has lost a major chunk of its cadre, and its organisation weakened because of splits at the local and national level.
Though Panag campaigned for the AAP in Delhi, she kept her distance from the local unit in Chandigarh.
At stake is not only a Lok Sabha seat but also the future of the three main candidates.
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A loss now for 70-year-old Bansal can mean that the focus will shift from his election-winning capability to a discussion on his political legacy. Even this year, a question mark was put on Bansal’s political future when Manish Tewari and Navjot Kaur Sidhu put a strong claim to the Congress ticket.
In a faction-ridden local unit of the BJP, Kher, 66, has consistently faced opposition from camp aligned with city party chief Sanjay Tandon. While a win can cement her position in the city, a loss can jeopardise her political career.
At 78, Dhawan is one of the oldest candidates in the fray. Known to be a turncoat, his only win from Chandigarh seat came in 1989 as a Janta Dal nominee. Thereafter, his most credible performance was in 2009 on a Bahajun Samaj Party (BSP) ticket when he polled 17.88% votes. In 2004, as an Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) candidate, he got only 6.61% votes. A loss this year is likely to push him to the city’s political periphery.
There are 33 more candidates in the fray in Chandigarh as 6,46,084 voters will seal their fate in the 597 polling booths across Chandigarh.
The votes will be counted on May 23.
