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Journalism of Courage
WITH NO parties seemingly willing to compromise, the Punjab Lok Sabha elections may see the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Congress, Akali Dal and BJP contesting separately, leaving four major contenders in the fray.
On the NDA front, renewal of the alliance between the BJP and Akali Dal has hit hurdles, while in the Opposition’s INDIA bloc, the AAP has declared it will contest alone, and put up candidates in all 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab and the Chandigarh seat. On Sunday, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge exhorted party leaders to win “all 12 seats in Punjab”.
Before they split over the farm laws issue, the Akali Dal and BJP had an understanding through their 25-year alliance, as part of which the former contested 10 of the 13 seats in Punjab, leaving Hoshiarpur, Gurdaspur, and Amritsar for the BJP. However, the equations have changed, with the Akali Dal no more the electoral force it used to be, and the BJP confident and demanding more seats.
An alliance between the AAP and Congress in Punjab was always going to be tricky given that they are the main rivals in the state as of now, though their tie-up in the Chandigarh mayoral polls managed to be a success. It’s another matter that the election is now caught in a legal challenge due to alleged rigging by the returning officer, helping the BJP win the mayor polls.
Since the AAP first contested in the Punjab Lok Sabha elections, after it was founded in 2012, all the four main parties have managed to win parliamentary seats in the state.
In the 2009 polls, the Congress bested the NDA, winning 8 seats and 45.2% of the vote share. While the Akali Dal won 4 of the 10 seats it contested with 33.9% of the vote share, the BJP won 1 of the 3 seats it contested with 10.1% of the vote share. That year, the Congress also won the Chandigarh seat.
The win was a boost for the Congress, coming two years after it lost the Assembly polls to the Akali Dal-BJP combine.
Two years after the Akali-BJP combine again came to power in 2012, in a rare successive win for Punjab, the AAP made a strong debut in the 2014 Assembly polls, with 4 seats from 13 contested and 24.5% of the vote share. It cut votes of both the Congress and Akali Dal, with the parties ending up with considerably lower vote share than in 2009. While the Congress was reduced to 3 seats and 33.2% of the vote share, the Akali Dal’s seat tally remained unchanged at 4, but its vote share fell to 26.4%. The BJP, whose vote share fell to 8.8% (despite the Modi wave of the 2014 polls), managed to pick up an additional seat compared to 2009 and also won the Chandigarh seat by a wide margin.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections – which followed the 2017 strong win for the Congress in the Punjab state polls – the Congress won 8 seats of the total 13, and 40.6% of the vote. The Akali Dal and BJP won 2 seats each, with 27.8% and 9.7% of the vote share. The AAP, however, fell to just 1 seat and 7.5% of the vote share despite contesting all the 13 seats. Chandigarh saw a much closer fight than 2014, though the BJP still won with 51.1% of the vote share, ahead of the Congress at 40.7%.
A closer look at the 2019 results shows that the AAP played a decisive role in 4 seats, where it won more votes than the winning margin. In 3 seats, the AAP secured more votes than the margin between the runner-up Akali and the winning Congress. The Akali Dal won 1 seat where AAP votes exceeded the margin to runner-up Congress. In 8 seats though, where the AAP placed third or fourth, its votes did not make up the margin gap.
In 2019, the NDA tie-up appeared to favour the BJP, which won the same number of seats as the Akali Dal, despite contesting only 3 seats and winning 9.7% of the overall vote share. The Akali Dal was the runner-up in 6 seats and finished third in 2.
Had the AAP and Congress allied in 2019, a direct transfer of votes may have benefited the Congress in only 1 seat, going by how many votes the AAP secured compared to the margin. The Congress was the runner-up in the 5 seats it did not win.
But the AAP will draw comfort from its performance in the 2022 Assembly polls. It won 92 seats in the 117-seat Assembly, easily clearing the 57-seat majority mark, and secured 42.3% of the vote share. The Congress won 18 seats and 23.1% of the vote share to become the main Opposition in the Assembly. Both contested in all the 117 seats.
In the absence of an alliance in 2022, the Akali Dal and BJP struggled, winning 3 and 2 seats, respectively. While the Akali Dal got 18.5% of the vote share from the 97 seats it contested, the BJP managed 6.6% from 73 seats.
Looking at the 2022 Assembly results through the lens of the Assembly segments that make up the Lok Sabha constituencies, the AAP secured the most votes in 11 parliamentary seats, followed by the Congress in 2. Based on these figures, an AAP-Congress alliance could be formidable in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls. While the Congress had the second-most votes in 6 seats, the Akali Dal was the runner-up in 5.
The BJP’s impact was minimal, with less than 10% of the votes in 8 seats, with its highest vote share in Gurdaspur, where one of its 3 Punjab MPs is from, with 13.6%. The Akali Dal and BJP’s combined vote shares were not enough to lead in any seat.
However, the BJP is expected to do better this time, with the farm law agitation now a distant memory, and the Ram Temple consecration upsetting many calculations.
