Chandigarh: As the curtains came down Monday on the high-pitched campaign for the Jalandhar bypoll scheduled for Wednesday, the major political players in the state — Congress, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)-BSP alliance, and BJP — have significant stakes.
There are five reasons why the Lok Sabha bypoll — necessitated by the death of Santokh Singh Chaudhary, a Congress leader — is witnessing such aggressive campaigning by all parties.
These include the emergence of Amritpal Singh as a self-styled Bhindranwale legatee, and apprehensions about Sikh radicalism witnessing a revival in Punjab.
There is also the factor that the election follows the demise of a giant of state politics, former chief minister Parkash Singh Badal of the SAD.
ThePrint explains.
Dipstick test of radical revival
This is the second bypoll for a parliamentary seat that is taking place in Punjab after the AAP swept to power in the state in the 2022 assembly elections.
The first was in Sangrur, in June last year. It was vacated by Bhagwant Mann after he became chief minister. It threw up a surprise with octogenarian Simranjit Singh Mann, a known Khalistan supporter, emerging victorious.
Simranjit heads the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) and attributed his victory to ‘Khalistani’ militant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.
Simranjit’s election was construed as radical elements gaining ground in Punjab. The state has since witnessed the rise of radical preacher Amritpal Singh, now under arrest.
The AAP government remained silent for months before, at the Centre’s prodding, going after him. In fact, the first scenes of the state’s action against Amritpal played out in Shahkot, one of the nine assembly constituencies that form the Jalandhar parliamentary seat. Punjab experts are of the view that the growing radical element in the state has taken a backseat since 18 March, when Punjab Police swooped down on Amritpal and his men.
Just how much these radical sentiments have diminished will be clear on 13 May when the results are out.
“It will be a crucial dipstick test of the popularity of the radical sentiment,” said Prof Manjit Singh, noted sociologist from Panjab University Chandigarh.
Simranjit has fielded his personal secretary Gurjant Singh Kattu in the Jalandhar bypoll and has actively campaigned for him. His campaign has been focused on the need to counter what he claims are efforts to establish a “Hindu rashtra” by the BJP, “after which they will implement the Manusmriti granth in Punjab”, which he says will be very dangerous for the Sikhs.
He has also spoken openly in favour of Amritpal during his campaign. However, unlike the Sangrur election, when Simranjit’s campaign was actively supported by Sikh youth, the same enthusiasm is starkly missing in the Jalandhar campaign.
Leaders of the other parties have not dwelt too much on the Amritpal issue in their campaign. Even the AAP has not overtly sought credit for action against Amritpal.
The SAD-BSP touched upon the issue during its campaign but focused mainly on the alleged atrocities by the AAP government on the youth who were arrested in the statewide crackdown on Amritpal in the run-up to his arrest.
“During this election campaign, there have been at least two attempts of sacrilege — one of the Guru Granth Sahib and another of a Sikh gutka. There have been two low-intensity blasts in the vicinity of the Golden Temple in Amritsar,” add Prof Manjit Singh.
“These incidents cannot be seen in isolation. There are forces out there who gain by keeping the radical element among the Sikhs on the edge and constantly active.”
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Another test of AAP’s appeal
The results will be an indication of whether the AAP has recouped from its Sangrur loss.
The significance of the election for the AAP is evident — for the past two days, party chief Arvind Kejriwal himself has been camping in Jalandhar, holding road shows for candidate Sushil Rinku, a former Congress MLA.
The Jalandhar bypoll has also come at a time when Kejriwal’s party is on a sticky wicket following the arrest of Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia in an alleged multi-crore excise scam. Kejriwal, too, is facing criticism over the alleged expenditure of Rs 45 crore on renovating his official residence.
During its campaign, the party has focused largely on the free power it has doled out. While the campaign was on in Jalandhar, Bhagwant Mann made it a point to hold a ceremony in Chandigarh last week where government jobs were given, and the opening of 80 more mohalla clinics in Ludhiana Friday.
In their campaigns, the opposition parties have alleged utter failure of the Mann government in keeping control on the law-and-order situation in the state.
Citing the almost daily incidents of killings, kidnappings, and snatchings, Opposition parties accused the government of making Punjab an unsafe place for the general public.
Balkaur Singh, who has been demanding justice for the killing of his son, singer Sidhu Moosewala, for more than one year, took to campaigning in Jalandhar Saturday, asking voters to shun the AAP. Though Balkaur Singh is not seeking votes for any particular party, the fact that his son was the Congress candidate in the assembly elections was not lost on anyone.
The ruling party is also facing the heat because of resignations of ministers due to allegations of corruption. Cabinet minister Fauja Singh Sarari was removed after a purported audio clip of his planning extortion from transporters went viral. Earlier, the party had sacked minister Vijay Singla on corruption charges. MLA Amit Rattan Kotfatta was arrested in February on similar charges.
Congress looking for a fig leaf
For the Congress, which suffered a humiliating defeat in the 2022 assembly polls, the Jalandhar bypoll is crucial.
The Gandhis had removed the then chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh in 2021, replacing him with Charanjit Singh Channi. From having won a record 77 seats in the 117-seat assembly in 2017, the Congress came down to 18 seats in 2022. The Congress candidate, Dalvir Singh, came in third in the Sangrur bypoll.
A victory in Jalandhar will signal whether the party’s downslide continues or it’s on a revival path.
The Jalandhar seat has been a traditional stronghold of the Congress, which has registered a victory on the seat every time since the 1999 elections. Santokh Singh Chaudhary, who died during the Bharat Jodo Yatra of Rahul Gandhi, had won the seat twice in a row since 2014.
His wife Karamjit Kaur is banking on sympathy among the voters following Chaudhary’s death to win the elections.
The BJP’s pitch
The BJP has fielded a Sikh candidate, Iqbal Singh Atwal, who belongs to a traditional Akali family that has some hold in the area.
The party could benefit from polarisation following the rise of Amritpal Singh and the revival of the “Khalistani” agenda among Sikh radicals.
Iqbal Singh, along with his father — former assembly speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal — joined the BJP on the eve of the elections.
After the Akali Dal broke its decades-old alliance with the BJP, it contested the assembly elections in collaboration with Amarinder Singh’s new outfit, the Punjab Lok Congress, and SAD (Samyukta), a breakaway outfit of the Akalis. The BJP, however, won only two seats. In the Sangrur bypoll, party candidate Kewal Dhillon came in fourth.
“It seems that the BJP is sure that the Hindu vote in any case is going to go into their kitty, and it is the moderate Sikh voter who is opposed to the radical agenda who they want to attract,” said Gagandeep Singh, a leading doctor in Jalandhar.
“Atwal is a mild-mannered candidate and the BJP can — if not win — cause a huge dent in the votebank of every other party.”
Gurdit Singh, a shopkeeper at Rainak Bazaar, said the BJP will also make use of sympathy following the death of Parkash Singh Badal, because of the manner in which the entire BJP leadership reacted to his death.
“From that point of view, the BJP and Akali Dal combination would have been a winning combination in this election,” he said.
Atwal has largely campaigned on a positive note, promising to bring benefits of national schemes, which he claims have remained untapped by the ruling government.
Will sympathy wave for Akalis work?
The Akalis have fielded Dr Sukhwinder Sukhi, who is the sitting MLA from Banga, as its joint candidate with the BSP. Sukhi commands respect largely due to his own personal equation with the voters in his constituency. The Akali campaign was led by former state minister Bikram Singh Majithia, who attacked CM Bhagwant Mann and the promises that he made before the 2022 elections.
The SAD campaign was suspended following the death of Akali patriarch and five-time CM Parkash Singh Badal. At the bhog ceremony of Badal, his son Sukhbir, who is heading the party, made it a point to apologise before everyone for any mistakes that his family knowingly or unknowingly made. The apology was clearly aimed at trying to assuage the core votebank of the Akalis, the rural Sikhs, to forgive and forget the sacrilege incidents involving the Guru Granth Sahib in 2015, when Parkash Singh Badal was the chief minister.
The Badal government was seen as having done little to bring the culprits to book. It faced a rout in the 2017 assembly elections, winning only 18 seats.
They have not been able to revive their position since then. The party won only three seats in last year’s assembly elections.
In the Sangrur bypoll, Akali candidate Kamaldeep Kaur Rajoana was relegated to the last position. Kamaldeep Kaur is the sister of militant Balwant Singh Rajoana, who is on death row for his involvement in the assassination of former chief minister Beant Singh in 1995.
The Akalis also expect sympathy votes following the death of Parkash Singh Badal.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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