It was 2014. India’s then future finance minister and BJP’s chief election strategist at the time, Arun Jaitley was contesting his first, and last, Lok Sabha election from Amritsar. There was an Akali Dal government in Punjab then and the Badal family, with which Jaitley had close ties, had deputed their confidante Bikram Singh Majithia as the BJP leader’s election campaign manager.
When I asked Jaitley why he was contesting from Amritsar instead of a more secured seat like Bhopal or any seat in Gujarat, he replied that Badal Sahib had assured him of a grand victory. Jaitley lost the election, chiefly because by that time, his election agent Majithia had become quite infamous in Punjab as the ‘kingpin of drugs’. Jaitley, who had ensured victory for the BJP in several elections across many states, lost his own maiden Lok Sabha poll.
Cut to 2022. Parkash Singh Badal, who had won elections from Lambi on ten occasions and has been Punjab’s chief minister for five terms, lost his seat in the recently concluded assembly election. Losing an election at this stage of life is nothing less than a shock for 94-year-old Badal, but the gist of the story is that even the most seasoned politicians err in feeling the pulse of the electorate, be it Jaitley then, or Badal now.
But Parkash Singh Badal is just one of the many stalwarts who have been shown the door in this round of five assembly elections. Amid a huge wave for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Punjab voters have forced all the big faces of the state to sit at home. And their message to them is loud and clear — mend your ways or we will do it for you.
From the Congress’ outgoing chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi to the party’s state president Navjot Singh Sidhu; from Bikram Singh Majithia to the Badals who turned the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) into a party of dynasts, no one was spared this time. Not only did the voters not differentiate between David and Goliaths in Punjab, but prominent faces and chief ministers met the same fate elsewhere too, whether it was in Uttar Pradesh or Uttarakhand.
Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) managed to win only one seat, undoubtedly the biggest defeat of her political career. Similarly, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s Congress could win only two seats after the much-hyped ‘Ladki hoon, lad sakti hoon’ campaign. Akhilesh Yadav did manage to increase Samajwadi Party’s vote share, but his dream of becoming Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister for the second time remained just that — a dream. Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami and former CM Harish Rawat complete the 2022 ‘losers’ club’, which is ThePrint’s Newsmaker of the Week.
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The Badal family
Parkash Singh Badal became India’s youngest Sarpanch at 20 and the chief minister of Punjab at 43. In an era when Punjab was battling radical politics and extremism, Badal Sr not only healed the wounds of the state but also secured a place for himself in the hearts of the people. Prime Minister Narendra Modi once called him the “Nelson Mandela of Indian politics” because just like Mandela, Badal had spent 17 years in prison during the freedom movement and the Emergency.
But these are changing times now. Barring one member, the entire Badal family lost the 2022 election. The SAD could win just three seats, its most crushing defeat since the party’s formation in 1920. Parkash Singh Badal lost Lambi seat to Gurmeet Singh Khudian of the AAP by a margin of 11,396 votes. Similarly, his son Sukhbir Singh Badal, who took charge of the Akali Dal in 2008, lost to AAP’s Jagdeep Kamboj of the AAP by close to 31,000 votes in his stronghold Jalalabad. Sukhbir’s brother-in-law Bikram Singh Majithia was defeated in Amritsar East by the AAP’s Jeevan Jyot Kaur, who runs an NGO. Only Majithia’s wife Ganieve Kaur could win a seat for the Badal family from Majitha. A Congress member, Manpreet Singh Badal (Sukhbir’s cousin), lost to AAP’s Jagroop Singh Gill from Bathinda Urban.
Those who observe the politics of Punjab from close quarters say that ever since Sukhbir became SAD president in 2008, this cadre-based party was turned into a party of dynasts. Its core supporters — farmers — and a strong cadre withered away from it.
Prakash, Sukhbir and Bikram were the most powerful ministers in the 2012 Punjab cabinet, while Parkash’s son-in-law Adesh Partap Singh Kairon was also in the cabinet. Later on, Harsimrat Kaur Badal, married to Sukhbir, became an MP and a Union minister.
At a time when parties like the AAP were constantly transforming their politics, Badals’ needle got stuck, and so it was only a matter of time before the public rejected them.
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Channi, Sidhu, Amarinder – Congress’ troubling troika
Just like the Badals, the Congress has also reverted to its worst performance of 1977. It has come down from 77 seats in 2017 to 18 seats in 2022. Channi, who became the first Dalit chief minister of Punjab with an eye on 32 percent Dalit votes in the state, lost both his seats in Chamkaur Sahib and Bhadaur to AAP candidates. Similarly, Navjot Singh Sidhu, former Indian cricketer, lost to Jeevan Jyot Kaur in Amritsar East.
“It was a blunder to install Channi as CM. The Dalit vote bank is not as cohesive in Punjab as it is in UP, and the Congress was so busy in its internal bickering that it lost this election even before the campaigning started. This should be a lesson for Rahul Gandhi,” the analysts say.
However, the Congress’s past record of learning from its mistakes is quite patchy. Even after such a resounding defeat, the hankering in the party is on for the post of Leader of the Opposition. For 79-year-old Amarinder Singh, who exacted revenge from the Congress by aligning with the BJP, it could not have been worse. He now starts a new innings at 80 with a defeat.
Questions on Mayawati’s political future
In 1995, when Mayawati became India’s first Dalit woman chief minister with the help of Kanshi Ram’s ‘social engineering’, no one imagined her becoming the CM of UP three more times. Mayawati, who used to hold an iron grip on UP’s 22 percent Dalit votes, could not even match the figures of the RLD and Congress.
Indeed, the BSP’s performance was worse than that of Raja Bhaiyya’s party. Not a single Dalit MLA from the BSP will be in the UP assembly this time. The BSP’s lone winning candidate is Umashankar Singh, who won from Rasara constituency in Ballia. The BSP had won 19 Lok Sabha seats in 2004 and had 20 MPs in 2009. In 2007, when Mayawati became UP’s chief minister for the third time, the BSP’s vote share was 30 percent with 206 MLAs.
The BSP could get only 12.84 percent votes in the 2022 UP election.
This is the worst electoral performance for Mayawati, who has given a new edge to the voice of Dalits and also to the ‘Mandal politics’ in UP. Even the BJP has pocketed more Muslim votes than the BSP’s 3-4%.
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Akhilesh Yadav – Revived SP from its political nadir
Akhilesh Yadav managed to increase the Samajwadi Party’s vote share by a whopping 11 percent this time — from 21 percent in 2017 to 32 percent in 2022. Its tally of seats also increased from 47 to 110, but his dream of becoming the chief minister could not be fulfilled.
Akhilesh Yadav could not break away from Mandal politics of connecting small castes and the BJP’s welfare-plus-Hindutva politics outweighed his challenge. Another drawback with Akhilesh was that the BJP could successfully convey the image of SP being a party of Yadav-Muslim, while the old tag of ‘Goonda Raj’ remained.
Akhilesh Yadav seemingly failed to understand that the politics of UP has changed quite a lot. In 2012, he became CM only after garnering 29 percent of the vote share. His father Mulayam Singh Yadav had become CM in 1993 by fetching 17.82 percent votes and then again in 2003 with 25.38 percent, but then there was no ‘Modi factor’ in those elections and the contests were triangular.
Priyanka Gandhi, who helmed the Congress’s campaign in UP, held 160 rallies and 40 road shows. Her party, which is facing political exile in UP for three decades, had secured 7 seats and 6.25 percent votes in 2017. This time, it could get only 2 seats with 2.37 percent votes.
The Congress now has its own chief minister only in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, and is an alliance partner in Jharkhand and Maharashtra governments. If Harish Rawat had focused on Uttarakhand instead of handling Punjab, perhaps he would not have to face defeat in arguably the last innings of his political life.
In Uttarakhand, Chief Minister Dhami lost his seat to Bhawan Chandrakapri, a Congress worker, even though the BJP won the state with a majority. Curiously, Uttarakhand has a long history of chief ministers getting defeated. B.C. Khanduri lost in 2012 and Harish Rawat had to bite dust in 2017. Discontent in his area and staying away from the assembly segment became the primary reasons for Dhami’s shock defeat, who was CM for just seven months.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)