Walls say it all about Sangrur, a constituency that hasn’t remained loyal to any party

On the highway from Sunam to Sangrur and further to Malerkotla, most hoardings feature Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer, the AAP candidate, along with party chief Arvind Kejriwal (shown as behind bars) and Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann.

However, posters of all the major candidates—the AAP’s Meet Hayer, the Congress’s Sukhpal Singh Khaira, SAD (Amritsar) sitting MP Simranjit Singh Mann, BJP candidate Arvind Khanna and the SAD’s (Badal) Iqbal Singh Jhundan—can all be seen on one single wall at various locations.

The constituency has not given more than two chances to any party or candidate. Since 1998, voters have elected candidates of the SAD (Amritsar), SAD (Badal) and the AAP twice and a Congress candidate just once, in 2009.

3 Punjab ministers and CM Mann

Sangrur is often considered as the Punjab AAP’s political capital as it is the home district of Mann. His native Satoj village is in Sangrur’s Sunam Assembly segment, while he is the MLA for Dhuri, another segment within the Lok Sabha constituency.

AAP candidate Meet Hayer, a minister, is the MLA for Barnala, also in Sangrur. The Sunam segment is represented by Renewable Energy Minister Aman Arora while in Dirba, also in the same Lok Sabha constituency, Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema is the MLA.

However, despite this apparent advantage for the AAP, the wind is not blowing towards the ruling party. A voter in Ladda village in Dhuri said, “Rah paina te vaah paina which farak hunda hai..(there is difference between meeting someone on the way or walking alongside someone). After walking alongside the AAP people…we came to know that all that glitters is not gold.”

Congress nominee Sukhpal Khaira’s posters say, ‘Jithe koi nahi kharda..uthe Sukhpal Khaira hai arda (where no one else dares to stand, there stands Sukhpal Khaira).”

Meet Hayer’s “zulam da zwab vote naal (reply to atrocities with votes)” slogan—a reference to Kejriwal’s incarceration in the Delhi liquor policy case—is common for all the AAP candidates.

While Arvind Khanna’s posters say “Sangrur de lokan di tamanna…ea vaar Arvind Khanna (it is the Sangrur people’s desire to elect Arvind Khanna this time), Simranjit Singh Mann’s posters feature his pictures with a sword and read, “ladange vi te khadenge vi (we will fight as well as will stand for you).”

Voters speak

Kulvir Singh, a roadside sugarcane juice seller in the Sangrur market, said that candidates cannot ignore voters, no matter how much work they have done.

“In 2009 the Congress’s Vijay Inder Singla won and he got a satellite PGI centre project for Sangrur, a national athletics sports stadium and many other projects from the then UPA government. However in 2014, Sangrurians made him forfeit his security deposit and elected the AAP’s Bhagwant Mann. He was re-elected in 2019. In 2022, the AAP government was formed in the state with 92 MLAs. In June 2022, Sangrur voted the AAP MP out and elected Simranjit Singh Mann with a margin of 6,245 votes,” he told The Indian Express.

The 2022 Lok Sabha bypoll was necessitated as Bhagwant Mann resigned as the MP after winning the Dhuri Assembly seat and became the chief minister.

“People were largely unhappy with MLAs for not attending to them properly. Only 45 per cent votes were polled in the bypoll…Think about the margin by which they lost, two months after forming the state government,” Kulvir added.

“It is a tough fight with a multi-cornered contest despite the fact that ruling AAP has MLAs in all the nine Assembly segments of the Sangrur constituency,” Harjit Singh from Mangawal village said.

There is anger against the state government for not fulfilling the AAP’s poll promise of giving Rs 1,000 per month to women, Krishan Singh from Balian village said. Listing other grievances against the state government, he said that only 5 kg wheat, which is from the central government, is provided. The government has also reneged on its promise to give Rs 20,000 per acre in flood relief compensation, he said, adding that the ruling MLAs are inaccessible.

“So who will win? June 4 will say it all,” he concluded, even though he showed no interest in going to vote on June 1.

Meet Hayer, however, said he was seeking votes on the basis of development work done by the state government in the past two years.

Sukhpal Singh Khaira of the Congress said he would raise the issues of farmers, bandi (jailed) Singhs in Parliament if voted to power.

The BJP’s Arvind Khanna said development would be possible only with the BJP. “Modiji is winning. So development is possible only with BJP. So I appeal to all to vote for the sake of development,” he said.

For his part, SAD (Badal) candidate Iqbal Singh Jhundan said the ground reality was something different. “The people remember the work done by Badal senior and they are with the Shiromani Akali Dal,” he added.

Sangrur MPs since 1998

Year | MP | Winning margin | Polling percentage

2022 | Simranjit Singh Mann | 6,245 | 45.3%

SAD (Amritsar)

2019 | Bhagwant Mann | 1.10 lakh | 72.40%

(AAP)

2014 | Bhagwant Mann | 2.11 lakh | 77.21%

(AAP)

2009 | Vijay Inder Singla | 40,872 | 74.41%

(Congress)

2004 | Sukhdev Singh | 27,277 | 69%

Dhindsa (SAD)

1999 | Simranjit Singh Mann | 86,317 | 62.5%

SAD (Amritsar)

1998 | Surjit Singh Barnala | 82,615 | 66.4%

(SAD)

* Bypoll