Harihar Swarup
Next year-2017-will see most important assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. UP poll has always been significant as it has bearing on Delhi’s politics. It is said the party which rules UP influences centre’s power equations. The next year’s election in most populous state of the union will see a tussle for power between Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party and Mayawati’s BSP. It is premature to make a poll forecast but, according to reports, Mayawati has better chances because of poor governance by SP.
Another development in UP is debut of Priyanka Gandhi as Congress’s main campaigners. She has charisma and many see in her reflection of her grandmother Indira Gandhi’s personality. She is, no doubt, a vote catcher and may help Congress get more seats.
Assembly elections in Punjab are due in few months and Navjot Singh Sidhu’s dramatic departure from the BJP is embarrassing for the party. His disillusionment with BJP started when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley replaced him as the party’s candidate from Amritsar in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Clearly, the Rajya Sabha nomination a couple of years later didn’t’ have a calming effect on the former cricketer known for his criticism of the ruling Shrimoni Akali Dal, one of BJP’s oldest ally.
Doubtless, by winning over Sidhu, the Aam Aadmi Party has gained immensely. Reports say that AAP may project him as the party’s chief ministerial candidate. In Sidhu, the BJP has got a prominent Jat Sikh with a clean image and a good campaigner who can not only erase the “outsider” tag but also taken on-Prakash Singh Badal and Capt. Amrinder Singh-more effectively since the age is on his side.
It must be conceded that AAP has broken new grounds in Punjab and it now entered the realm of possibility that the young party could get a second government after Delhi. Indeed, other than the BJP, AAP is the only growing political force in contemporary India. Congress and the Left parties are in decline while regional parties are powerful in specific geographical zones outside which they do not have bases. If AAP does perform well in Punjab in 2017, less than five years after the party was formed in 2012, they would have made one of the quickest political expansions in our electoral history.
Beyond Punjab, however, AAP’s moves into new terrains are nebulous and tentative and one cannot assess if the young party will have some measure of success. What can, however, be said is that although much of Kejriwal and AAP articulation is currently directed at BJP, it is actually Congress that they will continue to damage.
All of AAP’s plans are now being made in states ruled by the BJP and its allies where the Congress has been the alternative force. AAP is already the third force in Punjab and has ambitions of being so in Gujarat and Goa. One could offer the hypothesis that AAP’s ability to divide anti-BJP votes in states such as Goa and Gujarat has also has potential to work to the advantage of the ruling party. But one can state with some measure of certainty that the emergence of APP continues to be very bad news for the Congress.
That’s the national big picture vis-a-vis AAP. The micro picture from Punjab is more complex and actually goes to the heart of the greatest strength of APP that’s also the biggest challenge: Its leader Kejriwal, who has many abilities but he can’t technically be the chief minister of multiple states. And although Delhi was won with the slogan “paach saal Kejriwal” in the event of a win in Punjab the possibility of Kejriwal giving up one CM office for another has not been ruled out.
Punjab will be tempting, a full state unlike Delhi, that could be left in care of trusted deputy CM Manish Sisodia. Yet Kejriwal should also pay heed to mess Gujarat has become after Prime Minister Narendra Modi entrusted it to Anandiben Patel.
There is also other argument that since separation of Haryana in 1966, Punjab has only Sikh chief ministers most of whom, with the exception of Zail Singh, have been Jat Sikhs. Sidhu would be a catch for AAP as there’s no denying that of late Akalis attempting to draw the young party into religious disputes.
AAP has made an impressive display of building a party apparatus from scratch in Punjab but entrenched forces are now fighting back. Whatever the electoral outcome, there is one point about AAP that must be made. In an age where the resources of political funding remain opaque and traditional parties prefer to keep it that way, AAP is attempting a rather ambitious expansion with very modest resources and by raising a volunteer force in states where it hopes to expand. (IPA)
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