Punjab bucks trend

WITH eight of the 13 Lok Sabha seats in the Congress kitty, Punjab stands out as an island of blue in a sea of saffron across much of India. Up from its tally of three in 2014, the victory is a huge endorsement of the Capt Amarinder Singh-led government which stormed into power in 2017, ousting the SAD-BJP combine. The voter of the border state, most affected directly by any goings-on with Pakistan, was wary of the BJP’s nationalism pitch riding on the Balakot airstrike. That the BJP has bagged as many seats (two) as the SAD gives a moral edge to the former in the alliance. Though both Sukhbir Badal and his wife Harsimrat have won, there is much loss of face as the election was no cakewalk for the latter. The Akalis have to clearly work harder to reconnect with the masses and shed their baggage of 10 years of sacrilege-riddled governance.

The other party that has had a precipitous decline is AAP. Bucking the national trend in the last General Election, too, Punjab was the only state in the country to send four AAP candidates to Parliament. But soon, internal squabblings in the fledgling party led to splinter factions and destroyed the credibility it had built. Its lone victorious nominee this time, state president Bhagwant Mann, made it on his charisma and goodwill. Arvind Kejriwal has to think beyond his Delhi model if this third front is to be kept alive.

The gains made by the Congress in Punjab stand out as the Modi wave has swept the neighbouring states of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Delhi. Even as the strengthened Captain will be expected to lend support to the beleaguered Rahul Gandhi, he will also have to look into his own stable, where Navjot Singh Sidhu tried to sabotage the party’s chances at the hustings with his mischievous references to ‘friendly fights’. Politics is a game of wins and losses; honest efforts to introspect and improve always lift the fallen the next time.