Punjab: AAP fancies a sweep, Congress in delusional mode, Akali Dal & BJP fear public memory

Within Haryana's 10 seats, Congress will contest in 9, leaving 1 for AAP in Kurukshetra. Chandigarh's lone seat will see Congress as the sole contender. In Goa, Congress is set to contest both available seats.

In the midst of the kabhi haan kabhi naa of the INDIA alliance nationally, chances of the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) striking a partnership in Punjab appears a non-starter. While AAP thinks it is miles ahead in the race and does not need Congress for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in the state, the latter too wants to go it alone and has willed itself to believe the Punjab Lok Sabha results may turn into the fabled tortoise-and-hare story.

Even as the Punjab Congress is hoping against hope for a miracle, the more existential reason for saying no to an alliance is that like elsewhere, in Punjab too, the grand old party either has delusions of  grandeur or it is its only survival kit to stay afloat.

AAP’s Jalandhar Boost

If BJP has single-handedly uprooted Congress across the nation, in Punjab as also in Delhi, the AAP has brought about the downfall of the Congress, which won eight of its 52 seats from here in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the second highest number of seats it won from any state, after the 15 from Kerala.

And now, conceding any more electoral space to AAP could be a threat to the party’s very existence and its current crop of leadership. Notably, many of its leaders left it in tow with former CM Capt Amarinder Singh and are now in the BJP. The fears of the Congress can be weighed by what the senior Congress leader Partap Singh Bajwa said sometime back: “Alliance with AAP is like signing a death warrant.”

On the other hand, AAP won a landslide majority in the 2022 Vidhan Sabha polls, and the indications are – and its leaders too think – that their party can dominate the state on its own. During the Jalandhar Lok Sabha bypolls in 2023, its candidate Sushil Kumar Rinku won the elections by a comfortable margin of 58,000 votes in a four-cornered contest with Congress in second place.

If the Jalandhar bypoll results are replicated in the 2024 LS polls, AAP would be happy to go on its own in all 13 seats. The one-odd result in the form of the Sangrur LS bypolls in 2022 saw SAD Amritsar’s Simranjit Singh Mann defeat AAP.

But that was a flash in the pan – probably angst against the AAP soon after Sidhu Moosewala’s murder and Deep Sidhu’s death in an accident about which many conspiracy theories did the rounds and ultimately harmed AAP.

‘Ek Thi Congress’

Whether AAP’s overconfidence is misplaced or not will be known only after the elections, but what it thinks of Congress was summed up by Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann who sometime back said, “The shortest story a mother in Delhi or Punjab would narrate to her child is 'Ek thi Congress'...”

Seemingly striving to turn Bhagwant Mann’s ‘Ek thi Congress’ barb into a reality are the Punjab Congress leaders beginning with Navjot Sigh Sidhu, who his party members think is an ‘unguided missile.’ On January 21, he held a rally at Moga about which the Punjab Congress President Amrinder Singh Raja Warring said Sidhu sought no permission from the state unit.

Subsequently, Raja Warring suspended ex-MLA Mahesh Inder Nihalsinghwala and his son Dharampal Singh for organising the rally. Apart from it, the senior leaders of the party have also written to the high command seeking disciplinary action against Sidhu. But Sidhu is in no mood to relent. On February 1, despite being a member of the Punjab Congress's election committee, Sidhu remained absent from the meeting. Instead, he held a parallel meeting and also posted pictures on social media.

SAD & BJP: Unflagging Panthic, Farm Ire

The other two main political parties in the fray are the Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But both these parties would have to deal with the ghosts from their pasts – for SAD, the issue of sacrilege (be-adbi) which took place during their regime in 2015 is still fresh in the minds of the voters.

Though, Sukhbir has not only apologised ‘for not being able to nab the culprits who committed sacrilege’, he is also trying to bring together the splinter Akali factions. But Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa – a former Akali and a long-time associate of Parkash Singh Badal – says as long as Sukhbir Badal is at the helm, there can be no reconciliation.

As for BJP, the now repealed three farm laws which saw the maximum opposition from the farmers of Punjab could come to haunt the saffron party in the coming polls. The best case scenario for the BJP which was always a smaller partner in the Akali-BJP coalition for 40 years is that they can manage to be a force to reckon with in the two seats of Gurdaspur and Hoshiarpur which have a sizable Hindu population.

Shamsher Chandel is an independent journalist based out of Chandigarh. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.