Punjab Elections

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Punjab Elections: Competition between the Badal and the Patiala Family or serious politics?

A total of 37 parties contested the elections in Punjab this time but these elections are more likely to decide the future of one out of the two politically endowed families, the Badal and the Patiala families.

The battle between the dynasties is as old as the hills. The Patiala family represents the Punjab Congress whereas the Badal family represents the Shiromani Akali Dal. A trend has been observed in the elections in Punjab; the rolling door trend.

The Congress and the Akali Dal have been in power chance by chance, in an alternate manner. One comes into power as the other one rolls out and waits for the next elections to come and make them roll back right in, much like Tamil Nadu politics where the AIADMK and the DMK keep exchanging powers every five years. The table below will make the point clearer.

Apart from the set trend, there are other factors that hint towards the Congress having a slightly heavier hand than the Akali Dal this time. The biggest factor is anticipated to be Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’s support to the Congress.

The leader of Dera Sacha Sauda, the most influential spiritual and social organisation in Punjab has a reservoir of 35 lakh devotees. Dera’s devotees account for 67 constituencies out of a total of 117 constituencies that have the palpable power of tipping the result in favour of any party they put their hand on.

The Congress party got Dera’s support in the 2007 elections and although they haven’t been barefaced about their support but have made clear that they want good and clean leaders in the system and the Akali Dal are just the antipodes. 18 out of the 93 candidates of the SAD had a criminal record out of which 5 had serious criminal cases of murder, kidnapping, robbery and the like pending against them.

Apart from that SAD has thrived on their alliance with BJP for the last 40 years in Punjab, a major reason for their victory during the 2007 elections and those before.

BJP won 19 out of 23 seats for the SAD the last time but it doesn’t seem like they would repeat history or perform anywhere near it this time around. The BJP leaders themselves have predicted (off the record) to go down from 19 to 10 in these elections.

SAD has another reason to be sad as it is not only the Patiala family that they have to fight but also their own. Unhappy brother and nephew of Prakash Singh Badal, Gurdas and Manpreet Badal have disassociated themselves from the party and gone ahead and formed their own, in the name of PPP (People’s party of Punjab).

According to Sukhbir Singh Badal their larger family is still together and Gurdas Badal never really contributed to the political decisions of the party.

On the other hand times may not be as tough for the Congress party but it won’t be a cake walk for them either. The Patiala family is facing internal feuds itself with Malwinder Singh, who not only disassociated himself from the party but went ahead and has joined the Akali Dal.

Congress is also time and again blamed for ignoring the local areas and restricting their campaigns to the main areas.

Both parties are likely to face the toughest political test in their political careers as the election results aren’t as easy to predict as they usually have been in Punjab.

The dismantling of families and other new developments can tilt 3-4 percent of the votes to either of the sides and in such impermeable elections creation of a vacuum as slight as 3-4 percent too can lead to astonishingly unanticipated results.

The elections have been interesting though with both parties showing imperishable confidence with SAD vouching to win in 80 constituencies and the Congress predicting a win of 75 seats.

Unfortunately there are a total of only 117 constituencies in Punjab and not 155. We’d thus have to wait till the 6^th of March to see which of the two families would be celebrating with butter chicken!

Himanshi Chaudhary