Congress not only trumped the opposition parties but also all the exit polls which suggested a hung house with the Aam Aadmi Party neck and neck with Congress. The couple of polls that projected a clear mandate for Congress fell far short in their prediction of the number of seats the party has actually won.
The victory in Punjab has come as a big boost for the Congress party that had only gone downhill since the 2014 Lok Sabha debacle.
Captain Amarinder- the man who led the charge for the party in this election- couldn’t have asked for a better present for his 75th birthday. The win with a big margin is sure to elevate his stature within the victory-starved Congress party, as well as the state where he will be counted among political stalwarts.
On the contrary, the poll outcome has come as a big setback for the Aam Admi Party and its national convener, Arvind Kejriwal. His ambition of breaking out at the national level and being able to take on India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi now lies in tatters.
The party was confident of forming the government in Punjab riding a popular wave in the Malwa region. However, the party’s showing in Malwa shows that the party’s support was overly vocal. AAP’s inability of getting a foothold in the Majha and Doaba regions of the state has hurt the party’s prospects most where it could win just two seats.
AAP’s wounds are likely to keep festering for a long time since it seemed to be well placed for a victory in the state.
It is argued that the factors like the concentration of decision-making power in the hands of outsiders like Sanjay Singh and Durgesh Pathak, infighting in the party and ill-timed eviction of Sucha Singh Chhotepur, wrong selection of candidates, and the alleged overconfidence have contributed to AAP’s poor performance. Apart fromanalysingg the reasons for its defeat, AAP would have to chalk out its plan for the future to strengthen and expand its base in Punjab.
While the Shiromani Akali Dal and BJP combine may have been prepared for a defeat with a ten-year anti-incumbency, with just 17 seats in their kitty, the performance is one of the worst in the state’s political history. However, they may find solace in the fact that they could beat the exit poll predictions of being contained to a single-digit figure.
The embarrassing loss coming at the back of the Bargadi-shooting of innocent protesters, the spurious pesticide scam and the synthetic drugs scandal, the SAD must have had a sigh of relief with Parkash Singh Badal and Sukhbir Badal securing their respective seats, along with that of Bikram Singh Majithia, when many senior Akali and BJP leaders failed to save their seats.
The cards played by the Congress, in this election, of replacing Partap Singh Bajwa with Capt Amarinder Singh as the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee President at an appropriate time, and inducting Navjot Singh Sidhu into the party fold, seem to have yielded the desired result.
However, a win for Congress means the hard work of governing a state faced with an economic crisis of sorts with an ever-mounting debt, especially with the freebies that have continued in Punjab throughout the SAD-BJP rule. The new government will find it extremely difficult to go with the economic prudence and do away with those “unproductive subsidies”.
There seems to be no intent either if Congress’ own manifesto is anything to go by. Captain Amarinder Singh’s own promises of unemployment allowances, free mobile phones and data and a slew of other populist promises will be a huge burden on the state finances.
Continuing the free power supply to farmers, giving jobs to one person to each family, waiving the loans of farmers are the promises people of Punjab expect him to deliver on.
Ending the existing subsidies will mean political hara-kiri. One will have to see whether the long-term good of Punjab or populist political compulsions dictate the new government’s policies.
It’s evident that Captain Amarinder Singh who is credited with the Congress victory has inherited no bed or roses. Rather far from it.
