The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in Punjab may offer the most enduring image of a political coalition, yet the ruling alliance of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is faced with a serious challenge to its supremacy from the young brigade of the Congress in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
In nine of the 13 Lok Sabha constituencies in Pubjab which go to polls tomorrow, NDA candidates are pitted against their Congress rivals. The Congress, which had touched its nadir in 2004 by just winning 2 seats, has decided to experiment this time, fielding four Youth Congress leaders.
While the Congress camp is seething with enthusiasm over the ‘undercurrent’ of pro-Manmohan Singh wave across the state, the SAD campaign is focused on developmental agenda. The SAD-BJP combine has sought votes on the basis of AB Vajpayee government’s record of showering bounties on Punjab and ending discrimination of the state by the Congress-ruled Centre.
However, in spite of their unity, a BJP leader admitted that the alliance could lose seats in the Lok Sabha elections. “We (BJP-SAD) have reached our peak and it is possible that we may lose a couple of seats due to anti-incumbency,” he said.
The BJP is contesting on three seats — Amritsar, Hoshiarpur and Gurdaspur — and the SAD will contest the rest.
Amid the spectre of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal fielding his daughter-in-law Harshimrat Kaur and the Congress fielding Raninder Singh, son of former chief minister Amarinder Singh, from Bhatinda to perpetuate family rule, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi has used Punjab as a laboratory for his experiment with fielding young faces in the elections.
The four Youth Congress leaders whom he has hand-picked as candidates from Punjab this time are Manish Tewari, national spokesperson of Congress (Ludhiana), Raninder Singh ‘Bittu’, grandson of the slain chief minister Beant Singh (Anandpur Sahib), Sukhwinder Singh ‘Danny’, vice-president of the Punjab Youth Congress (Faridkot) and Vijender Singla (Sangrur), former chief of Youth Congress, Punjab. As against them, the SAD-BJP combine has mostly repeated its candidates.