Relevance of Badals in question after dismal show in Lok Sabha elections

As the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) went into a huddle last week to dissect its dismal showing in the general election, the party’s leaders put the blame on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Akali leaders blamed the BJP’s quota politics — allowing reservation to economically disadvantaged in the general category — as being the reason for Dalits not rallying behind them.
 
SAD leader Maheshinder Grewal told the media: “The anti-reservation rhetoric caused us a lot of damage in this election. The community (Dalits) felt that the BJP, which is our alliance partner, may discard the reservation system if it comes back to power.” Punjab has the highest proportion of Dalits in its population in India with almost of third of the state’s population belonging to the Scheduled Castes (SCs).

 
A look at Punjab’s election results shows that the party might just have itself to blame for the debacle. While the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was undoubtedly the biggest loser in Punjab, the Akalis failed to re-capture the disillusioned supporters of the AAP. In 2019, the AAP’s vote share plummeted to 7.4 per cent from 24.5 per cent in 2014. The party’s strongest candidate Bhagwant Maan is its sole representative in the newly elected Lok Sabha. In 2014, the AAP had four MPs from the state, which has 13 Lok Sabha seat.
 

Much of the AAP’s votes in 2019 seem to have accrued to parties except the SAD. The Congress bagged almost 40 per cent of the vote share — up from 33 per cent in 2014. The Congress increased its seats to eight from three. The Akalis managed to marginally increase their vote share from 26.4 per cent to 27.5 per cent but won two seats less than in 2014. Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) almost doubled its vote share to 3.5 per cent but didn’t win a seat. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), meanwhile, managed to win two seats — the same number of seats it had won in 2014 with just a marginal increase in its vote share.

 
These results have deep implications for the Akalis and the Badal clan in Punjab. Akali candidates, including Grewal, who himself who lost in Ludhiana, were seeking votes in the name of Modi. Grewal’s posters in Ludhiana were a testament to how the party was asking voters to select the Akalis “to elect Modi as PM”. Modi’s face was more prominent than both Prakash Badal and his son Sukhbir during the campaign. In the end, only Sukhbir Badal and his wife Harsimrat Kaur were the only winners from the party. That the Badals’ appeal was restricted to their pocket boroughs indicates the Badals have failed to win back the trust of the Punjabi voter even two years after its rout in the Assembly election. The voters associated the Badal clan with nepotism, corruption and administrative ineptitude during their 10-year rule.

 
It’s not just the Badals but also their party is staring at oblivion. The SAD’s core ideological plank of protection of the Sikh identity seems to have backfired on it. After the 2015 incident of the desecration of the Sikh holy book Guru Granth Sahib, many similar incidents took place under the Akali rule. Now, Sukhbir Badal is one of the people who have been charge-sheeted by the Special Investigations Team (SIT) probing the 2015 desecration. Furthermore, the Amarinder Singh government has come across a defender of the Sikh faith after it introduced its own ‘blasphemy law’ that made desecration of not just the Sikh holy book but also the Bhagavad Gita, the Quran and the Bible punishable with life imprisonment. The Akalis are not just losing their political identity but are also being seen as harming the very faith they projected themselves as the defenders.

 
If that wasn’t bad enough, the split in the party with senior leaders like Ranjit Brahmpura and Ratan Ajnala floating the SAD (Taksali) just before the election portends further woes for the SAD. While the SAD (Taksali) contested just one seat in 2019 and won nothing, its self-projection as the “real Akalis” challenging the Badals’ hegemony could damage the SAD more than just electorally.
 
Also, voters in Punjab now increasingly perceive Congressman Amarinder Singh as a force multiplier for Narendra Modi. The ‘Amarinder for Punjab and Modi for India’ narrative was a silent undercurrent in the 2019 election among the electorate. Amarinder has been successful in projecting himself as the state’s new saviour on multiple fronts, including tackling drug abuse and rescuing the state from its financial mess. The Akalis and the Badals, meanwhile, might just be facing their worst existential crisis despite being part of a winning coalition at the Centre.