The upcoming by-election to the Jalandhar Lok Sabha constituency in Punjab is set to witness a fierce battle between two leading contenders — the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the principal Opposition Congress — even as all the major parties, including the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and BJP, have already hit the campaign trail even though the bypoll schedule is yet to be announced by the Election Commission (EC). Besides the 2015 Bargari sacrilege and Behbal Kalan firing episodes, the 1986 incident of killings in Jalandhar’s Nakodar are expected to be among the key issues that would dominate the parties’ campaigning for this bypoll, which is being seen in the state political circles as a precursor to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The bypoll was necessitated after the sitting Congress MP Chaudhary Santokh Singh passed away due to cardiac arrest during the Jalandhar leg of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra while he was participating in it. It has thus become a prestige battle for the Congress, which is looking to capitalise on the “sympathy factor” due to Chaudhary Santokh’s demise. The stakes are also high for the AAP in the bypoll, as the party had suffered a stunning defeat in the by-election to the Sangrur Lok Sabha constituency, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s home turf, in June last year, barely three months after it swept the state Assembly polls. The AAP government has been reeling under the charges of being ineffective on the law and order front, especially after hundreds of supporters of a radical leader Amritpal Singh overran the Ajnala police station near Amritsar on February 23. The Opposition has been going after the Mann dispensation for its alleged failures in maintaining law and order in the state. The AAP has now signalled that it is going to rake up the Nakodar killings in its campaign for the Jalandhar bypoll. On Friday, the opening day of the Punjab Assembly’s budget session, AAP MLA from Payal, Manwinder Singh Giaspura, urged the Speaker, Kultar Singh Sandhwan, that the names of the Nakodar victims be included in the tribute resolution to commemorate their sacrifice for the Sri Guru Granth Sahib. The Speaker accepted the request and led the House in paying its homage to the “Saka Nakodar” martyrs. On February 4, 1986, four unarmed members of the All India Sikh Students Federation — Ravinder Singh, Baldhir Singh, Jhilman Singh, and Harminder Singh — were killed by the Punjab police while protesting the desecration of the Sri Guru Granth Sahib in Jalandhar’s Nakodar. The incident has come to be known as “Saka Nakodar” (“Saka” in Punjabi means a historic incident or tragedy involving sacrifice). Significantly, both the Nakodar and the Kotkapura’s Bargari-Behbal Kalan episodes — about three decades apart — took place during the SAD-led government, with both the incidents involving the desecration of the Sri Guru Granth Sahib and the subsequent killings of protesters in police firing. With the Saka Nakodar issue now flaring up again, the Sukhbir Badal-led SAD’s trouble is likely to increase ahead of the Jalandhar bypoll, even as the party has already been marginalised in state politics after facing the brunt of the Bargari-Behbal Kalan incidents. CM Mann recently launched a scathing attack on Badals soon after the 7,000-page chargesheet filed in a Faridkot district court on February 24 by the ADGP LK Yadav-led Special Investigation Team (SIT) in the Kotkapura firing indicted them along with senior police officers. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections too, the then ruling Congress and the AAP had raised the Bargari and Nakodar issues to target the SAD in Jalandhar, among other constituencies. These issues were the key plank of the campaign of late Chaudhary Santokh, who had accused the SAD of allegedly forfeiting its moral right to call itself a “panthik party”. The then AAP candidate in Jalandhar, Justice (retd.) Zora Singh, who headed the first inquiry commission into the Bargari and Behbal Kalan incidents, told his campaign rallies that the previous SAD-BJP government did not implement his report leading the culprits to go scot free. He also raised the “Saka Nakodar” issue and visited the victims' families to assure justice to them. In its campaign in the constituency then, the SAD candidate and ex-Lok Sabha deputy speaker, Charanjit Singh Atwal, had remained evasive on issues raised by his opponents about justice eluding the families of the Nakodar victims. The Jalandhar bypoll, like the 2019 election in the constituency, is going to be fought mainly on the panthic issues, with the Nakodar and Kotkapura episodes setting the tone of its campaigning. Despite being on the backfoot, the AAP has however stepped up its campaign with party chief Sukhbir Badal recently camping in the constituency for a week.
