New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is busy stitching alliances across states ahead of the Lok Sabha elections and things are gaining momentum in Punjab too.
Talks are underway with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), and party president Sukhbir Singh Badal is likely to meet the top leadership of the BJP next week, a senior BJP leader told ThePrint.
Badal is currently on a statewide ‘Punjab Bachao Yatra’ to draw attention to the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government’s alleged failures. To begin with, Badal is covering five of the state’s 13 parliamentary constituencies and 45 of 117 assembly constituencies.
Eyeing a third consecutive victory in this year’s general election, a section in the BJP is of the view that to increase the party’s Lok Sabha tally from 2019, it is important to have allies on board. Many within the party have been pushing for the revival of an alliance with the SAD, according to a BJP functionary.
With the AAP keeping the SAD on its toes following the former’s win in the 2022 assembly elections, SAD leaders are also conscious that an alliance at this juncture is imminent to improve its presence in Punjab.
The SAD has been trying to revive itself politically ever since it went out of power in 2017 over the issue of sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib, considered a living guru by the Sikhs.
In December last year, Badal tendered an unconditional apology to the Sikhs for his inability to take appropriate action against those responsible for the sacrilege. He was Punjab’s deputy chief minister and home minister at the time of the incidents.
A second BJP leader told ThePrint that BJP’s organisation general secretary B.L. Santhosh, was expected to visit Punjab Friday.
“Both the parties are keen to have an alliance but the issue currently is of seat-sharing. The alliance will be announced once the issue of seat-sharing is ironed out between the two. The announcement may take place after the Parliament session,” the leader said.
Sources in the SAD said that a first round of talks between leaders of the two parties had taken place in the last week of January.
According to sources in the BJP, the SAD wants to stick to the old formula and contest 10 of 13 Lok Sabha seats, giving three (Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur and Amritsar) to the BJP to contest.
But the BJP is not willing to remain a “junior partner” and wants more seats this time, citing the groundswell of support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“Citing the expanding support base and the fact that it has given special focus to national security, it makes sense for the BJP to contest on more seats. So far, the BJP wants to contest on six seats and the Akalis would get seven. We have kept national security as an integral part of our governance and Punjab being a border state, many schemes have been announced for it. It is important that the BJP widens its scope in the state,” the BJP functionary said.
“The party is aware of the fact that in Punjab, the strength of the party increases in urban areas such as Amritsar, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Pathankot if it is in alliance with the SAD. If all goes well, the seat-sharing formula can be decided in the next few days,” the functionary added.
BJP’s Punjab in-charge and former Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani, who is on a three-day visit to capital Chandigarh to meet the party leadership, told ThePrint Thursday that the party was preparing for a fight on all 13 seats. “A decision regarding a tie-up with the SAD is the prerogative of the central leadership. We will abide by that decision,” he added.
R.P. Singh, national spokesperson of the BJP, added that it is “important in the national interest, and for maintaining social harmony that both parties work in tandem”.
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‘As many allies as possible’
In the previous Lok Sabha polls, the SAD-BJP alliance had won only four of 13 seats in Punjab while the Congress bagged eight.
In 2020, the SAD, which had been part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) since 1996, left the coalition in protest over the Centre’s now repealed farm laws. However, its breakaway factions came together as SAD (Sanyukt), which is now part of the NDA. But the BJP has not gained much politically by tying up with the SAD’s breakaway factions.
While most of the SAD’s breakaway leaders have returned to the Akali fold, Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, who heads the SAD (Sanyukt), and his son Parminder are still tied up with the BJP and are part of efforts to bring the two old allies together.
“The Dhindsas are eyeing the ticket from their traditional seat of Sangrur, which might fall in the BJP’s kitty in the new seat-sharing formula being worked out,” a Punjab BJP leader told ThePrint.
In the 2022 Punjab election, the AAP had won 92 seats while the BJP managed just two — Pathankot and Mukerian. The SAD had got three seats.
This year’s Jalandhar Lok Sabha bypoll was won by the AAP with 34.05 percent vote share, the BJP got 15.2 percent while SAD got 17.9 percent.
After the protests against the farm laws created a rift between the SAD and BJP, the latter has been making concerted efforts to reach out to the Sikh community with PM Modi leading from the front.
“Modi ji designated 26 December as Veer Baal Diwas, commemorating the martyrdom of the sons of the 10th Sikh Guru Gobind Singh. Not only this, we saw the opening up of the Kartarpur corridor and the celebration of the birth anniversaries of Sikh gurus,” the BJP functionary said.
After the alliance between the SAD and BJP unravelled, the BJP tried to expand its outreach to the Sikh community but with the focus now on increasing the overall Lok Sabha seats, a section in the party is of the view that it would need the support of “as many allies as possible”.
An SAD leader said the party had also “softened” towards the BJP and had last month supported the Centre on the idea of simultaneous elections.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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