A battle of “aam aadmis” (common people) is on in Punjab between the ruling Congress and its challenger the Aam Aadmi Party. The two are competing to be recognised as the party most empathetic to the issues of the common man. This competition has a lot to do with the fight for the dalit votes in the state.
The Congress has disrupted the electoral scene by appointing Charanjit Singh Channi, a dalit Sikh, as chief minister in place of Captain Amarinder Singh. The move is understood to have been prompted by feedback from the ground that the Amarinder regime was saddled with huge anti-incumbency and the support for the AAP was growing.
Also, the ruling party took into account the fact that the AAP had in 2017 made a dent in its dalit vote share.
According to political observers, the AAP has suffered a setback in its aim to secure dalit votes with Channi being made the chief minister. This explains the party’s attacks on Channi's credentials as a leader who identifies with the issues of the common man.
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The electoral calculation that guided the Congress' decision to replace Amarinder with Channi involved the fact that the AAP had eaten into its dalit votes, and more specifically, the dalit Sikh support base, in the 2017 assembly elections.
According to estimates, in 2017, the Congress had got around 41 per cent of the dalit Sikh votes, the SAD-BJP combine 34 per cent and the AAP 19 per cent of the votes. In 2012, the Congress had got 51 per cent of the dalit Sikh votes, with the SAD-BJP getting 34 per cent. So, while the vote share of the SAD-BJP remained constant among the dalit Sikhs, the support the AAP got from the community was at the cost of the Congress.
That the Congress wanted to deal with the AAP challenge through the changes effected in the establishment was evident as Channi, in his first press conference after he took charge, declared: “I am the real aam aadmi. This is a government of aam aadmi.”
He has often spoken of his humble origins—he lived in a house of mud and straw and made a living as a rickshaw puller.
Channi has made efforts to revamp the image of the chief minister's office to make it appear as being accessible to the common man and responsive to the needs of the people.
The new chief minister joined college students in a bhangra gig and even stops on the road to talk to people. To project himself as a leader who is in contrast to the royal and aloof Amarinder, he has reduced the size of his security detail and instructed his officials to be responsive to the issues flagged by the people.
Channi's endeavour to be seen as an aam aadmi included a rather low-key wedding of his son, for which the chief minister drove the groom to the venue and later sat on the floor with the guests to have a simple post-wedding lunch.
The AAP, on its part, is not letting go of any opportunity to take a dig at Channi's efforts to project himself as an aam aadmi's chief minister. While touring Ludhiana earlier this month, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said, in an obvious reference to Channi's efforts, that it was easy to copy Kejriwal but very difficult to emulate him.
Kejriwal also said that if Channi really wanted to be an aam aadmi like him, he should remove corrupt ministers from his government.
More recently, as he again visited Punjab, Kejriwal described Channi as a “duplicate aam aadmi”. He remarked that the people will vote for the “real aam aadmi”.