While the electorate in Punjab has often given decisive mandates in elections, greenhorn political outfits and splinter groups could play a key role in shaping the prospects of the next government in case of a hung assembly.
Certain opinion polls are predicting Punjab to be a hung assembly. Pollsters are forecasting a tight contest between the AAP, Congress and the SAD for the February 20 single-phase elections in this border state. Rookie political outfits, including former CM Capt Amarinder Singh’s Punjab Lok Congress (PLC) or the Sanyukt Samaj Morcha (SSM) led by popular farmer leader Balbir Singh Rajewal and other smaller splinter parties in poll fray, are likely to make the post-poll arena curious.
SSM was created after the yearlong agitation by farmers that eventually led to the Modi government repealing the three farm laws. The success of the farmer movement has buoyed farmers and farm leaders who are keen to leverage their strengths. SSM party has entered into an alliance with Samyukt Sangarsh Party (SSP) led by another farm leader Gurman Singh Chaduni. The SSM along with its ally is likely to find augmented acceptability among farmers in agrarian state Punjab, who led a resolute farmer movement against the Centre. As pollsters in its latest surveys predict AAP to be the single largest party in Punjab, even AAP’s national convener and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has admitted to some damage by the SSM in the polls.
The AAP was in talks with the farmer party (SSM) for an alliance ahead of elections. But that didn’t fructify owing to differences in seat-sharing between the two outfits. Capt’s party (PLC) will be contesting elections for the first time. PLC has entered into an alliance with the BJP and Sukhdev Singh Dhinda led splinter Akali faction named SAD (Sanyukt).
Old warhorse Capt Amarinder Singh could manage an appeal in certain constituencies only while its ally BJP will hope to make most of the seats it contested when it was an ally of the SAD (Badal). The BJP that contested 23 seats out of 117 in Punjab as a seat-sharing agreement with its former ally SAD, won only 3 seats in the 2017 elections. Dhindsa’s party is likely to show up with a limited performance on a few seats.
Punjab's Lok Insaf party led by the Bains brothers too is confident of putting up a formidable challenge in certain areas, including Ludhiana. Given that the traditional bipolar contest in Punjab, essentially between the Congress and the Akali Dal, has now turned into at least a four-cornered contest with new outfits in poll fray, Punjab’s political landscape will throw up a peculiar post-poll scenario if in case the results reveal a hung assembly.
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