Punjab: Amarinder Singh is the real winner

If actor Vinod Khanna's widow, Kavita, had been the BJP's candidate in the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha by-poll, could the party have avoided the humiliating defeat it faced?

If actor Vinod Khanna’s widow, Kavita, had been the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) candidate in the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha by-election, could the party have avoided the humiliating defeat it faced? Hard to say. Nothing went in the BJP’s favour in this election. But it may be premature to use the by-election setback to write the party’s obituary in Punjab  — just as it might be speculative to extrapolate the victory on the prospects of the Congress returning to power in neighbouring Himachal Pradesh, where Assembly elections are due on November 9.

Khanna won this seat in 2014 with a margin of over 136,000. Victorious Congress leader Sunil Jakhar’s margin of 193,000 signifies a swing of over 325,000 votes in favour of the party in just three years. Jakhar (chances are he will be renominated as the Congress candidate in 2019) would have to face another election in less than two years. But his victory also changes internal equations in the party, suggesting more cohesion and thinking than the Congress has shown in Punjab in recent years.

By-elections are usually won by the party in power at the state — and the Assembly polls in early 2017, which unseated the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), installing the Amarinder Singh-led Congress government in power — tipped the balance in favour of the Congress. The Congress won 77  of the 117 seats in the Assembly.

But it isn’t that simple. It was not just the BJP that lost the election, it was also the SAD. The undisputed (so far) leader of Dera Baba Nanak, Sucha Singh Langah, was taken down and booked in a rape case just a few days before voting was to be held. A former classmate of his daughter alleged that he had been raping her for nine years and handed over a video of the alleged act to the police, along with her complaint. The rape started when she was 30 and a widow. It went on because, she said, she could not complain to the police as he was a powerful minister in the Badal Cabinet. He was arrested and he resigned from all positions, including those in the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC). His resignation was accepted within hours. Perhaps in tacit acceptance that he may have been guilty, SAD chief Parkash Singh Badal did not campaign in the Gurdaspur poll. 

But this was just one reason for the BJP-SAD’s defeat. The election (and the resounding margin of defeat) showed little or no acceptance of the Centre’s assertion that demonetisation and the GST roll-out might have been bitter medicine but was good for the state’s overall health. Demonetisation, combined with the GST, appears to have led to an 18 per cent increase in income-tax collections in Punjab, especially Amritsar and its adjoining areas, in the first six months of the FY18 (April-September 2017). Add to that job losses, and the resentment against the revenue collection drive, and the situation becomes easy to understand.

The choice of candidate might have had a role to play as well. The BJP plumped for Swaran Salaria, a Mumbai-based millionaire who lost to Khanna in the party race to secure the nomination in 2014. Salaria projected himself as a member of Modi’s A-Team — in itself a questionable assertion buttressed by the fact that Modi, or indeed any other BJP national leader, said absolutely nothing in favour of his endorsement.

Coupled with the fact that the SAD brought nothing whatsoever to the table politically, the BJP’s defeat was a foregone conclusion for locals. It faced the ignominy of a 35 per cent drop in vote share. In every Assembly constituency, the party’s vote tally went down substantially, including Pathankot (down from 55,000 votes in 2014 to just over 32,000) and Dinanagar (from almost 50,000 to 40,000), where, after the terrorist attacks, the BJP’s promise of nationalism and the promise to keep the country safe could have got some traction.

The election also served to highlight the Aam Aadmi Party’s limitations. S Khajuria got about 24,000 votes and lost his deposit — and this in an overall anti-establishment political environment. The BJP has begun introspection, including laying bare, its angst about continuing its relations with the SAD. No doubt dirty linen will be hung out to dry in the coming months. But both parties know that they are joined at the hip. The real winner of the election is Chief Minister Amarinder Singh. The erstwhile detractor P S Bajwa has now become a supporter. Amarinder has shown his spurs in winning over factions, though it remains to be seen if the magic will endure till 2019 — in 2014 the BJP-SAD combine won six out of 13 seats and the AAP won four.