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Vijaya Pushkarna
Vijaya Pushkarna

ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS 2017

Street fighters

44sukhbirsinghbadal New battleground: Sukhbir Singh Badal (blue turban) and former Army chief J.J. Singh, the SAD’s candidate from Patiala, flash victory signs at a press conference in Delhi | PTI

Aam Aadmi Party queers the pitch with its aggressive style

It is not elections as usual in Punjab. The father-figure of Punjab, Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, 89, was at the receiving end of a shoe hurled at him on January 11 in Lambi, his constituency. The cavalcade of Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal has been twice pelted with stones, once in his constituency of Jalalabad that has elected him twice. Even as Sukhbir blamed “the Aam Aadmi Party leader and MP Bhagwant Mann’s inflammatory speeches” for the attack, these incidents—as a senior Akali put it—have been seen by the Akalis, the BJP and the Congress as a “breach of the unwritten niceties in Punjab elections”. State Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh was quick to disapprove of it, using the opportunity to urge voters to use the ballot to express their feelings.

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What is unusual for the Punjab assembly elections this time is the presence of a seemingly serious third contender—the AAP. Apart from the Shiromani Akali Dal, which has come out with a list of 86 candidates leaving the rest to its ally the BJP, the AAP is the only party to have announced a full list of 117 candidates. The party is buoyed by the fact that the May 2014 Lok Sabha elections saw them win 4 of the 13 parliamentary seats in Punjab, garnering 24 per cent of the votes. But, some of its leaders have either defected to other parties or formed splinter groups after trading charges over fund-raising. The Punjab Front, led by Dr Dharamvira Gandhi, former AAP MP from Patiala, has announced a list of 15 candidates. The Apna Punjab Party of Sucha Singh Chhotepur, who was the state convener of the AAP till he broke away, has come out with a list of 10 candidates.

The Congress will soon come out with its final list, having released its first list of 61 candidates. The Bahujan Samaj Party has zeroed in on candidates for ten constituencies, the CPI(ML) for eight, CPI for nine and the Trinamool Congress for five constituencies.

Yet another significant factor is that the Modi magic has ensured that the BJP’s alliance with the SAD remains intact even though state BJP leaders have been complaining about the lack of development in their constituencies and the failure to guard the party’s political interests. “There is no question of ending the alliance. It is a relationship that cannot be snapped,” BJP president Amit Shah had told THE WEEK soon after a delegation from Punjab met him with their complaints a few months ago.

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For now, it is raining freebies in the state, where polling will be held on February 4. The SAD, according to a senior officer who does not want to be identified, “has already been giving people a lot over the last one year”—from gas stoves to cycles to free insurance and a new shagun scheme for the girl child. The Congress has promised complete farm loan waiver, free smartphones for students, free education for girls, six marlas of land and 01 lakh each to the homeless to build houses, a job for every family, power to industry at 05 per unit and cheap land for investors who can generate jobs. The AAP has promised 25 lakh jobs, training youth for overseas jobs, abolition of fees for government job applications and free bus rides and laptops for students. While the SAD says there is no drug menace in the state, the other parties have promised to wipe out the drug supply chain—the Congress in 4 weeks and the AAP in one month.

If the SAD is burdened with anti-incumbency, having ruled the state for ten years, the Congress is plagued by a fragmented leadership. The AAP is yet to find its bearings in the state, with its leaders from Delhi bringing up the 1984 riots that hits a nerve in the national capital but is almost irrelevant in Punjab. Badal, possibly the senior most chief minister in the country, is seeking another tenure for himself even though his son has been the de facto chief minister. Amarinder Singh, on the contrary, specifies that he will not contest the next elections. The AAP, with no names for the big post, throws in the possibility of Arvind Kejriwal shifting from Delhi to Chandigarh—to be contradicted sometimes and ignored at other times.

But across the political divide, the slogans are similar—development, stability and an end to corruption—in a state that has plummeted in economic development rankings, including agriculture.

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