The PunjAAP Upsurge

As the BJP and its allies get ready to form the next government at the centre after sitting in the opposition for ten years in Parliament, Shiromani Akali Dal isn’t celebrating this mammoth victory. The party, jointly with the BJP, has bettered its previous performance bagging six seats our of 13 in Punjab. In 2009, Akali Dal-BJP combine had secured five seats.  The mood in the Shiromani Akali Dal is somber, in spite of a very poor performance by its arch rival, Congress that has managed to win only three seats. It’s actually the surge of the Aam Admi Party in Punjab that has caused this unnerving of the ruling alliance in the border state. AAP has won four Lok sabha seats in Punjab with close to 25% vote share, just 2% less than that of the SAD. AAP also won 33 assembly segments of 117 in the state. 

The gloom is also on account of a crushing defeat of BJP stalwart, Arun Jaitley at the hands of former chief minister, Captain Amrinder Singh, and a pyrrhic victory of Harsimrat Kaur Badal over her husband's cousin, Manpreet Badal in Bathinda.  Captain Amrinder Singh. defeated Jaitley by a big margin of over one lakh votes. The local BJP and Shiromani Akali Dal leaders, who were desperate to get rid of BJP MP Navjot Sidhu, had assured Jaitley that the election would be a walk in the park for him, and that his victory margin would be over 1.5 lakh. The embarrassing defeat Jaitley suffered has already begun to result into rolling of heads with cabinet minister Anil Joshi having to resign from chief minister Prakash Singh Badal's cabinet.   

The Badals are apparently most shocked at the tough challenge Harsimrat had to face in Bathinda. During several rounds of counting of votes, her margin over Manpreet kept fluctuating between a few hundred to a couple of thousand. And in the end a victory by 19000 votes came as a huge relief that saved the Badals from a total loss of face. When the chief minister and the deputy chief minister had claimed to sweep their family stronghold by a margin of over 2 lakh votes, this narrow victory couldn’t have brought any cheer to them. On the result day, the Badals remained within the confines of their sprawling castle-like mansion in Badal village, disappointing the media persons who returned without any sound bytes and quotes.  

That the Akali Dal- BJP combine couldn’t even win even half of the seats in Punjab was no surprise to anyone. There was no Modi wave anywhere in Punjab and the anti-incumbency against the centre was too feeble to be felt amid the anger against the state government that was all pervasive in almost all sections of the society.

The performance of the ruling combine has been largely on the expected lines. However, the Aam Admi Party, that was expected to play against the Congress, cutting into its votes, has sprung a total surprise by having outperformed the Congress. While the Congress could win only three, AAP has won four seats,  trouncing heavyweights like Preneet Kaur, Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa and Paramjit Kaur Gulshan. . Its vote share is just two per cent less than that of the Akali Dal.  AAP nominee from Sangrur, Bhagwant Mann defeated Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa by over 2.10 Lakh votes and the victory margin of Prof Sadhu Singh over Paramjit K Gulshan of SAD is 1.70 Lakh in Faridkot. On some seats where AAP could not win, the party still secured huge number of votes. In Anandpur Sahib, Himmat Singh Shergill got over three lakh votes.

An Akali Dal insider had told me just a couple of days before the results that the AAP was good for the Akali Dal if it won one or two seats and ate into the urban votes that are largely anti Akali. But with the impressive show in Punjab, not only has AAP wrested the space of the primary opposition party, it has sounded warning bells for both the Congress and Akali Dal, as Punjab is, for the first time, having a tryst with a credible non-Congress, non- Akali political outfit.

Even Aam Admi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal expressed surprise over the party’s performance in Punjab. He said the party had not expected to win these many seats in Punjab.

It’s basically the anger against the ruling government in the state and the mistrust towards the Congress  that manifested in the form of support to AAP in Punjab. Lack of a strong party structure and absence of top leaders in the run up to the polling day notwithstanding, the party made significant gains in Punjab, while having been annihilated everywhere else in the country. People of Punjab have responded to issues of drugs, law and order, scarcity of sand and gravel due to alleged monopolization of mining business, high-handedness of the AKali Dal and perceived arrogance of top akali dal leaders, including Sukhbir Badal and his very influential brother-in-law, Bikram Majithia. Several SAD leaders admit that imposition of property tax in urban areas, advance tax on traders, e-filing etc turned the tide against the ruling combine. 

Many believe the overconfidence of deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal in his election management skills and his grandiloquence did him in. He is believed to have lost touch with the ground reality while regaling in his previous consecutive electoral successes. Not realising that selling dreams doesn’t always work, especially if you have been in power for over seven years, some of those have to be delivered too.

The setback the Congress faced because of the AAP was perhaps foreseen by everyone except the Congress. Though, congress' vote is still higher than the SAD at over 33%, with the extremely strong anti-incumbency against the SAD-BJP government, it could be much higher. Though, AAP has dented both the SAD-BJP and Congress, but it makes sense to believe that AAP's gain is Congress' loss. In the absence of AAP, Congress would have been the beneficiary of the anger against the state government. Captain Amrinder Singh said in Amritsar “It was PPP in 2012, and it's AAP that has tormented us”. This clearly shows the Congress’ inability to learn from its past mistakes. Even if it did attempt a course correction by stitching an alliance with Manpreet Badal, it miserably failed to fathom the AAP phenomenon. 

Following the lok sabha results, established parties have begun seeing AAP as a potent threat in 2017 when Punjab goes to polls. But, in order to emerge as a credible and viable alternative, the party will have to work to earn the votes on its merit rather than look to getting just the angry votes. Angry voters are the ones that have propelled four party candidates to lok sabha this time. If it doesn't capitalise on this valuable opportunity to end the decades old two party paradigm, AAP would lose trust of the people and that would be hard to regain.