In Panthic belt, new challengers emerge for beleaguered SAD(B)

The Congress and the AAP both have almost identical secular and liberal ideologies. SAD(B) hoped to regain its vote bank from both parties by correcting the ‘mistakes’ that party president Sukhbir Singh Badal had recently admitted. However, disenchantment with the AAP is not bringing the vote bank back to the SAD(B) as new players have emerged to cash in.

The SAD(B) could not win Khadoor Sahib seat in 2019, too. However, the worst has happened for the party in this election, as independent candidate and head of Waris Punjab De, Amritpal Singh, won the seat on the Panthic platform.

Party president Sukhbir Singh Badal alleged that Amritpal Singh was the design of central agencies to weaken the SAD(B).

Voters, however, showed little concern about claims that Sukhbir made and his own candidate, two-time former MLA Virsa Singh Valtoha, could barely save his deposit with only 86,416 votes he got against more than 3.19 lakh votes that were polled for the party candidate in 2019.

Amritpal Singh not only won the Khadoor Sahib seat but also played a role in the victory of an Independent candidate in the adjacent Faridkot constituency. Sarabjit Singh, the son of former PM Indira Gandhi’s assassin, Beant Singh, won the Faridkot seat with a significant margin of 70,000 votes, further eroding the vote bank of the SAD(B). The party candidate Rajwinder Singh Dharmkot finished fourth in the race, competing with BJP candidate Hans Raj Hans.

SAD (Amritsar) president Simranjit Singh Mann lost in Sangrur. However, his party also dented SAD(B) candidate Iqbal Singh Jhunda, who finished fifth. Even the BJP secured more than double the votes on the SAD(B).

Even when no strong candidate claimed panic votes in Gurdaspur and Amritsar, the party’s performance worsened.

In Gurdaspur, the party was contesting for the first time after breaking an alliance with BJP. However, the candidate Daljit Singh Cheema could only get 85500 votes.

In Amritsar, the party strategically moved by fielding a Hindu candidate from a Sikh-majority seat, assuming that its traditional vote bank would stick to the party.

However, Anil Joshi only managed to maintain a lead in the Majitha assembly constituency, which was SAD(B)’s only gain in the 2022 assembly elections. He ended up in third place in the Ajnala and Attari assembly seats, where the party was the runner-up in 2022. SAD(B) also finished second and third in the Amritsar South and Amritsar East assembly seats, respectively, in 2022, where Joshi finished fourth.