Ahead of the election, the party tried to put up a show of unity by campaigning with the state’s top leadership, with leaders such as former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi (above) and former state unit president Navjot Singh Sidhu. (Twitter @CHARANJITCHANNI)
The fight was seen as a prelude to next year’s general election, but the results of the bypoll show the party is yet to win voter support after last year’s anti-incumbency wave
The Congress failed to arrest its decline in Punjab with its third straight defeat in a major electoral battle since last year’s assembly polls after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Saturday won the Jalandhar Lok Sabha seat. The opposition party candidate lost by a margin of over 58,000 votes.
The fight was being seen as a prelude to next year’s general elections, but the by-election results show the party is yet to win voter support after last year’s anti-incumbency wave. Ahead of the elections, the party tried to campaign with the state’s top leadership, with leaders such as former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi and former state unit president Navjot Singh Sidhu, but failed to retain its stronghold. Winning since 1999. Worse, successive election losses for the party have raised fears of more defections.
The absence of senior party leaders from Delhi during the election campaign did not help even as AAP fielded its top leaders including Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and party convenor Arvind Kejriwal during the campaign.
Furthermore, the choice of candidate is also being blamed for the defeat as it was felt that there was an anti-incumbency wave against the party.
Giving ticket to Santokh Chowdhary’s widow was not a good idea. One leader admitted, “There was a lot of anti-incumbency against him.”
Some leaders claimed that there were other factors as well, adding that the division of SC votes between the SAD-BSP, the BJP and the Congress affected the party in a major way. While religious Sikh voters chose BJP candidate Inder Iqbal Atwal, Shiromani Akali Dal-BSP candidate Dr. Sukhwinder Sukhi rode on Bahujan Samaj Party’s vote bank among Ravidasis. Both factors ate into the traditional vote base of the Congress, retaining the leaders.
Leader of Opposition Pratap Bajwa said that there will be introspection. “I thank all the party workers for putting up a united show and fighting the elections till the very end. We are introspecting on the reasons behind the election results. We will come back more strongly in the 2024 general elections.
The most embarrassing thing for the party was that in five assembly constituencies of Adampur, Jalandhar Cantt, Jalandhar (North), Phillaur and Shahkot, none of its MLAs could register victory in their respective constituencies. These MLAs had won the 2022 assembly elections despite a wave against the Congress.
