Amid shifting dynamics, AAP challenges BJP dominance in Hoshiarpur’s 5-cornered contest

The BJP’s hopes rest on the success of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s last-minute attempt to salvage its campaign. Previously scheduled to visit Amritsar on the final day of campaigning, Modi has redirected his efforts towards Hoshiarpur, signalling the urgency with which the party views the situation, a party insider said.

Anita Som Parkash is facing accusations of being an outsider in the local political arena. Her husband could not contest the polls this time owing to ill health and advanced age.

Despite her dedication to social work, Anita grapples with the perception that she lacks the deep-rooted connections necessary to represent the constituency effectively. Also, Som parkash is missing on the ground and people are asking why.

A senior BJP leader said, “At least three of the nine Assembly segments of the constituency boast a robust party base. The Mukerian, Hoshiarpur and Dasuya Assembly segments have a sizeable number of Hindu voters, who may play a major role in favour of the party.”

Anita’s stronghold is in the Phagwara Assembly segment, where she lives and has been actively involved in social work. However, her association with Phagwara has led to criticisms that her husband as the MP has neglected other parts of his constituency.

As the campaign reaches its climax, all eyes are on Modi’s visit to Hoshiarpur, where he is expected to make a compelling case for the BJP. Whether his intervention will be sufficient to overcome the rising tide of anti-incumbency remains to be seen. Nonetheless, the stakes are high as the BJP battles to maintain its foothold in a constituency that has been favourable to the party’s aspirations in some past elections.

Demography, development, anti-incumbency

Meanwhile, the constituency is witnessing a five-cornered contest with the Congress’s Yamini Gomar, the AAP’s Dr Raj Kumar Chabbewal, the SAD’s Sohan Singh Thangal and the Bahujan Samaj Party’s Ranjit Kumar, among other candidates, also in the fray.

Anita Som Parkash is banking on the development plank to win votes. Speaking to The Indian Express, she cited various infrastructure projects—road expansion, railway line construction and facelifts for the Phagwara and Hoshiarpur railway stations—as signs of progress in the region.

With around 56 per cent of the population in Hoshiarpur being Hindus, Anita is also invoking the Ram temple construction in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya and the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir during her campaign. The demography does give an edge to the saffron party in its pursuit of a hat-trick in the constituency.

The AAP’s Dr Raj Kumar Chabbewal, a former Congress MLA who surprised not only the leaders of his party but also the people of his Chabbewal Assembly segment by jumping ship a few days before the announcement of the Lok Sabha elections, is harping on development.

At every meeting and rally, he talks about the development. “I brought a government college to Chabbewal and got several village roads built. The work will be replicated in the remaining eight Assembly segments of the Hoshiarpur constituency,” he said.

Though the AAP is also facing anti-incumbency in the state, Dr Raj Kumar has been quite popular among the people for charitable work undertaken through his scan centres and other charitable medical services.

Dr Raj Kumar was the sole Congress MLA from Hoshiarpur and one of the strongest contenders for the party’s Lok Sabha ticket. Also, he had been quite vocal against the ruling AAP and was a prominent critic of the state government’s policies. Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal have campaigned for him.

Congress’s Yamini Gomar has been in politics for over a decade now and is an educated woman, but local people do not consider her connected to the masses in the entire constituency. Stressing the region’s diverse landscape, she highlights its potential as a tourism hub, the need for infrastructure development to address issues such as wildlife management, farmers’ issues and unemployment, besides education.

On the stump, Gomar has also been accusing the sitting MP of neglecting the constituency. She urges women to fight for their rights instead of placing blind faith in the AAP, adding that the party has failed to fulfil its promise to give Rs 1,000 monthly to every woman aged 18 or above.

Gomar also questions the AAP’s commitment to gender equality, highlighting the absence of any female candidate among its nominees for the 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab. She encourages women to demand answers from the AAP on these issues.

Gomar, who contested the 2014 Lok Sabha polls on an AAP ticket and got a 22.19 per cent vote share (2,13,388 votes) in her maiden election, left the party in 2016 for the Congress. She had since been mostly inactive in politics till she got the party ticket after Dr Raj Kumar defected to the AAP.

As for star campaigners, Gomar had state Congress president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring seeking votes for her on the day she filed her nomination. She has mostly been campaigning herself but quite extensively and intensively.

The SAD is more dependent on the Panthic vote but focusing on development issues as well, while the BSP is accusing all other parties of anti-Dalit policies.

Once a Congress bastion

Hoshiarpur was a Congress bastion until 1991, with the party consistently winning the seat since 1952 except on rare occasions, such as when the Bharatiya Jana Sangh’s Jai Singh won in 1967 and Baldev Singh of the Janata Party emerged victorious in 1977.

However, the BJP started building a strong base in Hoshiarpur in the late 1990s. Between 1998 and 2019, the BJP won the seat four times (1998, 2004, 2014 and 2019) and the Congress only twice (1999 and 2009). The BSP opened its account in 1996, when the party’s founder, Kanshi Ram, won the seat. Among other important former MPs are Giani Zail Singh (1980), who later became the President of India, Baldev Singh and Amar Nath Vidyalankar.

In the 2019 elections, Som Parkash polled 4.21 lakh votes (42.52 per cent) followed by Dr Raj Kumar, then with the Congress, who scored 3,72,790 votes (37.63 per cent).

With a total of 15,96, 442 voters in the constituency, including a substantial 35 per cent Scheduled Caste electors from both the Hindu and Sikh communities, the stakes are high for all contenders.

The constituency comprises nine Assembly segments—six in Hoshiarpur, two in Kapurthala and one in Gurdaspur districts. Besides unemployment, lack of infrastructure, wild animals spoiling crops, lack of civic amenities, drinking water scarcity in the sub-mountainous Kandi area, the resentment over the Agniveer temporary military recruitment scheme is also high in the constituency, which sends a large number of youths to the armed forces.