Chandigarh: Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann Wednesday announced that there will be no seat-sharing or tie-up with the Congress in Punjab for the Lok Sabha elections.
The AAP and the Congress are allies in the Opposition’s 28-party INDIA bloc, which is looking to take on the Modi government in the upcoming elections.
Speaking to media persons following a cabinet meeting here, the chief minister said the AAP will win all the 13 seats in the state and ruled out an alliance with the Congress.
While some AAP MLAs have said this on earlier occasions, this is the first time the chief minister has made such a statement.
Mann’s remarks came on the heels of another INDIA bloc constituent, Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, announcing that her party would contest the Lok Sabha elections alone in the state.
Meanwhile, Punjab’s Congress unit has also been objecting to having a seat-sharing agreement with the AAP, especially on account of the multiple corruption cases registered by the Mann government against prominent Congress leaders since it came to power in March 2022, which they have described as a “witch-hunt”.
While some political experts in the state attribute Mann’s decision to the AAP’s confidence about winning the majority of the state’s Lok Sabha seats, others say the move would actually benefit the BJP, both at the Centre and the state, where it is currently a marginal player.
The AAP stormed to power in the state in 2022 with 92 of Punjab’s 117 assembly seats.
The party won four of the state’s 13 Lok Sabha seats in 2014, but all of one in 2019 — Mann’s Sangrur. After Mann vacated it to become CM, the seat was won by Simranjit Singh Mann of the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) — which is different from the SAD of the Badals.
The AAP currently has one MP in the Lok Sabha from Punjab, Sushil Kumar Rinku in Jalandhar, who won the bypoll held after Congress MP Santokh Singh Chaudhary passed away last year.
The Congress, which was voted out of the state in 2022, won eight Lok Sabha seats from Punjab in 2019, and three in 2014.
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‘Weak alliance directly benefits BJP’
Talking to ThePrint, Dr Pramod Kumar, who heads the Institute of Development and Communication in Chandigarh, said the AAP’s decision is bound to weaken the strings that have brought the party and the Congress together at the national level.
“Mann’s announcement could not have been made until it had a clear go-ahead from the party’s Delhi leadership. This move has the complete approval of Arvind Kejriwal,” he added, saying “other members of the INDIA alliance will have to take this into account”.
“A weak alliance directly benefits the BJP. If the AAP continues to have an alliance with the Congress in other states, despite the decision taken by the state unit of the AAP in Punjab, it will lead to confusion among the electorate in Punjab, which also helps the BJP and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD),” said Kumar.
Professor Harjeshwar Singh of the department of history at SGGS College, Chandigarh, however, said both the AAP and the Congress stand to benefit from this decision.
“The AAP is confident that its popularity has not dipped since it came to power almost two years ago. The impact of free power bills on the electorate and the personal popularity of Bhagwant Mann as a leader will ensure a thumping victory for the party in the Lok Sabha elections,” he said.
“If anything, the Congress as a partner would have dragged them down.”
According to him, the decision is also beneficial for the Congress “as it continues to hold the position of the principal Opposition party (in the state), and stands to benefit from any anti-incumbency vote against the AAP, which would have otherwise gone to the BJP or the SAD”.
Dr Kanwalpreet Kaur, who teaches political science at Chandigarh’s DAV College, said the fault lines that erupted in the INDIA bloc in the wake of the assembly elections in five states late last year appear to have deepened.
“AAP’s decision to go solo betrays, one, the unabated hostility between the AAP and the Congress in Punjab and, two, the dominance of Mann within the AAP in the state,” she added.
Kaur said it is “clear that, so far as Punjab is concerned, Mann continues to play a pivotal role, especially with the weakening of Kejriwal’s own position in view of the ongoing excise policy investigation by the Enforcement Directorate”.
“The euphoria generated by the AAP-Congress tie-up for the Chandigarh mayoral polls, fortified by public statements given by Congress leader Pawan Bansal and AAP leader Raghav Chadha, appears to have run out of steam,” added Kaur.
Kaur was referring to the AAP’s and the Congress’s announcement earlier this month that they would contest the Chandigarh mayoral polls together.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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