Phagwara to give a fresh Dalit face to politics today

Deepkamal Kaur
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, October 23

No matter what will be the results of the Phagwara Assembly seat bypoll to be declared tomorrow, the Doaba region is set to get a new Dalit face.

Both main parties — the Congress and the BJP — had fielded new candidates who would be acceptable to both main communities here — Dalits and Hindus. Since Phagwara remains the epicentre of Dalit politics and communal issues, both parties tried to strike a balance between them, remain neutral to their issues and ensured that there was no such untoward incident which could create any further divide.

Congress candidate BS Dhaliwal (57) took a premature retirement as IAS officer to enter politics. He still had two years of service. He is a Mazhabi Sikh and if he wins, he is set to shake the position of former minister Joginder Mann, who has been one of the most prominent Mazhabi leaders of the party. For the same reason, Mann is learnt to have only made symbolic appearances in the main rallies of the Congress during the campaign.

Stakes are high for the BJP too which held the seat till its 2017 MLA Som Parkash became Hoshiarpur MP. If the party candidate and former Punjab SC Commission Chairman Rajesh Bagha (46) loses, the party’s Assembly seat count which already is at barely three out of 23 in the state will further drop. Phagwara was the only seat which the BJP could win from Doaba in the last Assembly poll.

For the same reason, the entire BJP leadership, including party in-charge Prabhat Jha remained stationed around Phagwara and Mukerian for the past nearly three weeks. Since he was here, party’s state president Shwait Malik, who is looking forward for re-nomination, too had to keep focusing here.

But on ground, the local BJP leaders and workers somehow remained split. Anita Som Parkash, wife of Union MoS Som Parkash, who too was a seat contender, ensured that she never visited a rally site where former Union MoS Vijay Sampla remained present. Five councillors from the Vijay Sampla group defected to the Congress in the elections.

The outcome of the Phagwara bypoll also depends on the vote share that the BSP candidate Thekedar Bhagwan Dass and Lok Insaaf Party candidate Jarnail Nangal take. Both candidates tried to revoke sentiments in their favour, citing the issue of demolition of the Tughlakabad temple, which the BJP attempted to counter till the end by spreading across reports regarding the Centre’s proposal in the SC to offer land for the temple site.

Bahujan Front leader Sukhwinder Kotli said: “According to me, tomorrow’s result can change the dynamics of the Dalit politics. Phagwara has been a hot seat for Dalit issues, especially since it has 45 per cent population of the community. A lot will depend on which way the Dalits go this time, especially at a time when the sentiments of the community were badly hurt.”

Dalit writer Des Raj Kali, however, differs. He says: “Phagwara has been the seat of experiments over Dalit-Hindu issue for decades. But this time, the Congress and the BJP played a safe game. I don’t think that the elections were fought on any of the Dalit issues. Even the Tughlakabad temple issue was not taken up the way certain parties could.”

In Mukerian, the BJP’s other seat in Doaba, it remains to be seen as to which issue voters preferred to vote for — sympathy for Congress candidate Indu Bala, who lost her husband two months ago, or nationalism which the BJP attempted to rake at every rally.