A shifting political arithmetic in Punjab

Buoyed by electoral victories in West Bengal, Assam, and Puducherry, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seems eager to carry that momentum into Punjab, treating it as the next domino in a long line waiting to fall. In a bold move, it is readying itself to go solo for the Assembly polls in Punjab, due in 2027.

The BJP has been present in Punjab since the country’s independence. People know what it stands for, what it has done and what it has not done. Before 1992, when the BJP (earlier known as the Bharatiya Jana Sangh) was fighting alone, it secured, on average, 6%-7% of the vote share during the Assembly elections. Later, when the BJP entered into an alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in 1997, its vote share went up a tad to around 8%, according to the book Electoral Politics in Punjab. In 2022, the BJP contested the Assembly elections in alliance with the Punjab Lok Congress and got 6.6% of the vote.

In Punjab, the BJP and the SAD have been alliance partners since 1996, and have long contested Assembly elections together, with the SAD fielding candidates in 94 seats and the BJP in 23. The BJP contested these electoral battles as a ‘junior partner’ in the alliance, which many in the party’s State unit believed restricted the BJP’s growth. However, after the SAD chose to sever ties with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) over the contentious farm laws in 2020, the BJP has been pushing for its expansion across the State. To achieve its solo ambitions, in March this year, Union Minister Amit Shah sounded the party’s poll bugle at the ‘Badlav rally’ in Moga, declaring that the party would be contesting the Assembly elections alone in Punjab.

A changing political pulse

Nevertheless, the political arithmetic keeps changing. The century-old party, the SAD, has weakened, even though it saw a modest resurgence in last year’s rural body polls. The ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which swept into power on a wave of anti-establishment energy, now appears to be running well below its earlier strength after the exit of seven AAP Rajya Sabha MPs, six of them from Punjab, on April 24. 

The timing of the AAP MPs leaving the party is seen to be as damaging as the defection itself. With Assembly elections due early next year, the party has been going to the public, and presenting its accomplishments and projecting confidence about forming the next government. Against this backdrop, the exit of sitting MPs sends out a contradictory message, implying that those who knew the party best chose to walk away. The defections could also crack open factional feuds and internal power struggles. The allegation that Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann appeared in a “drunk state” during the State Assembly proceedings on May 1, has handed the Opposition ready ammunition. The BJP has been quick to capitalise off it. 

Meanwhile, the Congress, which is the State’s principal Opposition and has been positioning itself as the primary challenger to the ruling AAP, appears to be struggling with internal discord. In January this year, Congress leader and former Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi called for “greater Dalit representation” in the party, pointing out that Dalits were not getting due representation, bringing the discord within the party into public view. In February, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, during his visit to Punjab, gave a stern message to the State unit of the party, asking them to work as a “team”.

The BJP seems to believe it can expand into this fractured space. While Punjab presents a distinct political landscape where religion, region and caste-based coalitions remain central to the State’s electoral arithmetic, the party has already been reaching out to Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Dalits in a bid to pull-off another case of ‘social engineering’ in order to get a foothold in the State. The Scheduled Castes account for 31.91% of the population in Punjab, while the OBCs account for around 25%-30%. Simultaneously, the party has also been working to project its pro-Sikh image by propagating the Central government’s steps taken in the interest of Sikhs since 2014.

With the BJP buoyed by renewed confidence, the AAP weakened from within, and the Congress consumed by its own internal discord, Punjab’s electoral space is shaping up to be unusually crowded. In such a multi-cornered contest, the possibility of a clear mandate could be remote.