Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, May 16
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has made an impressive entry into Punjab politics. For the past several decades, traditional mainstream parties, such as the SAD, the Congress and the BJP, had occupied the centre stage. The fledgling AAP has now stunned them with its performance in the Lok Sabha elections. Bucking the Modi wave, AAP has registered impressive wins on four seats even as its rivals, both the SAD-BJP alliance and the Congress battled anti- incumbency.
The SAD's performance is almost a repeat of the 2009 elections. It has won the same number (4) of seats. While it has retained the Bathinda, Ferozepur and Khadoor Sahib seats, it has lost from Faridkot and won the Anandpur Sahib seat instead. The BJP has won two seats this time. It has won Gurdaspur and Hoshiapur seats but lost the Amritsar seat. The BJP suffered a humiliating defeat in Amritsar where its star candidate Arun Jaitley lost by more than 1.10 lakh votes to former CM Capt Amarinder Singh.
The Congress has fared badly, winning only three seats. It had earlier held eight seats. Party big guns sPartap Singh Bajwa, Sunil Jakhar and Ambika soni and Perneet Kaur had to bite the dust. Whereas the AAP got 24.5 per cent votes, the SAD got 26.3 per cent, the Congress 33 per cent and the BJP 8.7 per cent votes.The remaining vote share went to the Independents.
The combined vote share of the SAD-BJP alliance is 35 per cent. AAP seems to have taken away 8 per cent votes from the SAD, that had got 34.75 per cent votes in the 2012 Assembly elections, and 7 per cent of the 40 per cent votes secured by the Congress in 2012. The AAP may have also eaten into the BSP and PPP vote share, (4.3 and 5.17 per cent respectively). The combined AAP-Congress vote share is about 57.5 per cent, far more than the ruling SAD-BJP alliance.
The vote share of the SAD (Amritsar), headed by Simranjit Singh Mann, this time was below 0.5 per cent. Mann got about 14,000 votes from Khadoor Sahib where the vote share of Independents and others was about 5 per cent. AAP candidates defeated political heavyweights Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, Preneet Kaur, Paramjit Kaur Gulshan and Sadhu Singh Dharamsot.
The youth played a pivotal role in AAP's success. The party, that attracted the the poor sections, women, employees and farmers, has done well in the constituencies with a rural character such as Sangrur, Faridkot and Fatehgarh Sahib.
Bhagwant Mann, who joined the AAP in March this year after parting ways with PPP leader Manpreet Badal, contested from Sangrur. He defeated SAD veteran Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa with a huge margin of over 2 lakh votes. Party candidate Prof Sadhu Singh (Faridkot) defeated SAD's Paramjit Kaur Gulshan by more than 1.70 lakh votes and Dr Dharamvir Gandhi vanquished Union Minister Preneet Kaur in Patiala. In Fatehgarh Sahib, AAP's Harinder Singh Khalsa defeated Sadhu Singh Dharmsot of the Congress and Kulwant Singh of the SAD candidate.
In Ludhiana, AAP candidate HS Phoolka, lost to Congress' Ravneet Singh Bittu with a thin margin. The performance of its candidates in Anandpur Sahib, Hoshiarpur and Jalandhar was not bad either.
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