Poll campaign falls silent in Amritsar district

Neeraj Bagga

Amritsar, February 18

Cacophony of elections ended on Friday which saw a string of allegations, counter-allegations, divisive tactics to split people on religious, regional and caste lines and much of banter came to a close on Friday evening. The voting is scheduled to take place this Sunday on February 20.

This campaigning recorded a paradigm shift. Unlike campaigning in previous elections where star campaigners, Bollywood and Pollywood stars, used to descend to influence the voters, no such personalities descended here.

Even national leaders had a limited role and a small number of political rallies were held. So there were no massive public rallies where national leaders of all political parties gather to give fiery speeches. Senior Congress leaders Priyanka Gandhi and Ajay Maken came to attend roadshows and small rallies. Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supremo Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodiya, Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, visited the holy city several times. Most of the times they held small rallies and attended roadshows.

Only Union Ministers Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh addressed big rallies. Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri also visited a couple of times, but relied on small rallies in favour of party candidates.

The number of autos equipped with the public address system announcing the names of candidates, party affiliation and freebies being offered was also limited this time.

Covid-19 restrictions and strict observation on poll expenditure added several new features in the canvassing. A majority of the candidates communicated with their voters through WhatsApp, YouTube and other forms of social media. They also utilised services of advertisements on YouTube to launch their advertisements, onerous job for election officials keeping a tab on the expenditure of candidates.

Out of the 11 assembly segments in the district, Amritsar East emerged as a hot seat. After overcoming the challenge from within Navjot Singh Sidhu was rehabilitated into the party by being appointed as president of the PPCC. It proved short-lived as the sitting MLA of the North East found his bête noire Bikram Singh Majithia of SAD contesting against him after abandoning his traditional Majitha seat in favour of his wife. To overcome the challenge Sidhu released his Punjab model but it was then checkmated by Aam Aadmi Party’s Jeewan Jyot Kaur, who released ‘Sankalap Patar’. On the last day of the election Sidhu released ‘Vachan Patar’.

Candidates distributed hand-outs among public for providing comprehensive detail of their parties and freebies being offered. As Covid-19 restrictions applied the brakes on massive rallies entire campaigning got restricted on local and the area problems.

Like in the past, political leaders turned to religions, communities and castes for their support. In between the campaigning Navjot Singh Sidhu went to pay obeisance at Mata Vaishno Devi shrine, nestled in Trikuta hills near Jammu. Senior Akali leader Bikram Singh Majithia went to pay obeisance at temples in his newly adopted assembly segment. Leaders of the Bhatia community exhorted their community to vote in favour of SAD and Dharambir Singh Mahiya, chairman of the Vimukat Jatis Welfare Board, called upon members of the community to vote in favour of the Congress.