JOIN USAll eyes on AAP as Punjab votes
Just before the finish line, the AAP, with its all-impressive poll campaign and a palpable undercurrent in its favour, finds itself between a rock and a hard place in a bitter contest for the 117 Assembly seats in Punjab that vote on Sunday.
From a bipolar contest that Punjab saw for a long time, this election for the first time witnesses a tough contest between five political parties in the fray.
This throws open the possibility of split votes and a likely hung Assembly on March 10. The clamour for change has been palpable with the AAP having an edge, especially in the Malwa region which accounts for the majority of seats.
But the ghost of AAP’s maiden Assembly election debut in 2017, when it lost both track and traction towards the end for allegedly “romancing radical separatists” in this border state, has come to haunt the AAP again.
The euphoria for the AAP in 2017 was much the same, but the party still lost. The Hindu voters then felt alienated amid “indications” that Arvind Kejriwal was hobnobbing with radicals.
Just before the elections now, Kejriwal’s estranged founding member of the AAP and poet Kumar Vishwas stirred a hornet’s nest alleging that Kejriwal wanted to be “either the Punjab CM or the PM of Khalistan”.
Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi of the Congress jumped in to cash in on the controversy.
He wrote to Union Home Minister Amit Shah claiming that Sikhs for Justice, a banned organisation, is in constant support of the AAP. In 2017, Kejriwal spent a night at the house of an ex-militant which cost the party dear, reducing it to just 20 seats.
The AAP may now find itself in a quandary over something it wanted to stay away from this time around, but will this be the undoing of the AAP? Kejriwal has termed the allegations by Kumar Vishwas laughable.
Sunday’s elections in this border state nevertheless remain a bitter multi-cornered contest between the ruling Congress, the AAP, the SAD-BSP, the BJP-Punjab Lok Congress (PLC) alliance and the farmers’ formation SSM.
The political dynamics have altered dramatically.
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