Chandigarh: Almost 14 months after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) came to power in Punjab, it registered a historic win in the Jalandhar bypoll, wresting a seat that had been with the Congress for the past 20 years.
The byelection was necessitated by the death of Congress MP Santokh Singh Chaudhary during Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra.
AAP candidate Sushil Rinku, a former MLA of the Congress, won by a margin of almost 59,000 votes, while Karamjit Kaur of the Congress came in second.
Karamjit Kaur is Chaudhary’s widow.
Rinku, who got over 3 lakh votes, would now be the sole Lok Sabha member of the AAP until the 2024 general elections slated next year.
The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)-BSP joint candidate Dr Sukhwinder Sukhi came in third, with almost 1.6 lakh votes, while Iqbal Singh Atwal of the BJP got around 1.4 lakh votes.
Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) candidate Gurjant Kattu managed to procure a little over 20,000 votes in what can be seen as a clear sign of the public’s rejection of radical Sikh politics.
SAD (A) head Simranjit Singh Mann, a known ‘Khalistan’ supporter, had won the Sangrur bypoll in June 2022, after Bhagwant Mann vacated the seat to take over as chief minister.
The AAP scored more votes than the other parties in seven of the nine assembly constituencies that make up the Jalandhar parliamentary seat. The BJP got the lead in the two urban constituencies of Jalandhar North and Jalandhar Central.
The AAP said Rinku’s win was a thumbs up from the public for the party’s performance since it came to office in the state in March 2022.
“Our performance in the past 14 months has been ratified by the public,” said Bhagwant Mann, addressing a press conference in Delhi with AAP chief and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal.
“Politics of hatred and division do not work. People want political parties to work, not play these games,” added Kejriwal.
In winning Jalandhar, the AAP appears to have brushed off the humiliation of losing Sangrur, which was Bhagwant Mann’s seat for 12 years.
From 2.29 per cent in 2019, the AAP’s voteshare in Jalandhar climbed to 34 per cent in the bypoll. The AAP candidate in 2019, Justice Jora Singh (Retd), had to forfeit his deposit.
Also Read: From ‘masterji’s son’ to stand-up star & ‘Pegwant’, how dropout Bhagwant Mann became Punjab CM
Nod for AAP freebie
The AAP’s Jalandhar victory is being attributed to the raging success of its free power scheme, which gives every household in Punjab 300 units of free electricity.
The other factor that seems to have played a big role was the support of the Dera Sachkhand Ballan, which almost every AAP leader visited ahead of the election. The Dera has a strong hold on its followers, most of whom are from Jalandhar Dalit belt.
The fact that the AAP has managed to keep afloat despite the Opposition’s criticism over its alleged failure to control the law and order situation, and the charges of financial corruption and sexual conduct against some members of the party, shows that rivals may need a strategy realignment in 2024.
The bypoll win also gives a psychological fillip to the AAP leadership, which has been lying low following the arrest of former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia in an alleged multi-crore excise scam.
Kejriwal himself is facing criticism over the alleged expenditure of Rs 45 crore on renovating his official residence.
Victory eludes Congress
For the Congress, a much-needed victory has eluded them. To add to its injury, its voteshare has dropped to 27.4 per cent, from 38 per cent in 2019. In the 2022 assembly polls, the Congress won five of the nine assembly seats that constitute the Jalandhar Lok Sabha constituency.
Although Karamjit Kaur gave a spirited fight to Rinku, winning 2.4 lakh votes, losing the stronghold is a big setback for the party. The loss can be seen as a continuation of the party’s debacle in Punjab, which began with the high-command removing the then CM Captain Amarinder Singh in 2021 and replacing him with Charanjit Singh Channi.
From a tally of 77 seats in the 117-seat assembly in 2017, the Congress managed to win only 18 in 2022.
The back-to-back setbacks in Sangrur and Jalandhar will likely raise questions in the party about the leadership of state Congress chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, who replaced Navjot Singh Sidhu in the role after the latter was removed following the party’s performance in the assembly elections. The Jalandhar loss is also expected to widen the gulf between the party’s top leaders.
Sidhu, who came out of jail in April and also campaigned extensively in Jalandhar, is expected to once again make a claim for the party’s headship.
Punjab assembly Leader of the Opposition Partap Bajwa tweeted Saturday that the party accepts “the verdict of people of Jalandhar”.
We humbly accept the verdict of people of Jalandhar. I thank all the @INCPunjab leaders and workers for putting a united show and fighting the election till the very end. Congratulations to @AAPPunjab and Sushil Rinku on the victory. We will come back stronger in 2024 LS Polls.
— Partap Singh Bajwa (@Partap_Sbajwa) May 13, 2023
Rejection of radical Sikhism
The candidate fielded by SAD (Amritsar) won all of 20,000 votes, showing the public’s impatience with radical Sikh politics.
Over the past one year, Punjab witnessed the rise of radical preacher Amritpal Singh who, within a few months, managed to rally the radical Sikh element in the state around him. He openly espoused the “cause of Khalistan”, and came into direct confrontation with the AAP government on several occasions .
After giving him a long rope initially, the state government — at the Centre’s prodding — tackled the threat he posed with a firm hand. This decisiveness in tackling a secessionist force also seems to have played a role in AAP’s victory. Amritpal is currently under arrest.
Lesson for BJP & former ally SAD
The one lesson that both the BJP and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) of the Badals may learn from this election is that — as an alliance — they had much better electoral prospects than as parties contesting separately. While the Akali-BSP alliance got 1.58 lakh votes, the BJP candidate managed to get 1.35 lakh votes.
The SAD-BJP alliance voteshare in the 2019 Lok Sabha election in Jalandhar — before they split over the since-withdrawn farm laws — was almost 36 per cent. The BSP, which had contested alone in 2019, got almost 20 per cent of the votes in Jalandhar.
This time, the combined voteshare of the SAD-BSP is almost 18 per cent, and that of the BJP a little over 15 per cent.
In terms of the number of votes, the BJP appears to have made inroads into Nakodar, Shahkot and Kartarpur, when compared to their voteshare in these constituencies in the 2022 assembly elections.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
Also Read: What comeback of Simranjit Singh Mann, a vocal Khalistan advocate, means for Punjab politics