BJP heads towards crushing defeat in Punjab

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 10

Though the BJP was expecting the role of a kingmaker in the Punjab assembly elections but going by the current trends of counting the party is heading towards a crushing defeat. At present, the party is leading on just two seats.

Party’s state president Ashwani Sharma is leading from Pathankot by 7,628 votes andJangi Lal Mahajan is leading by 1,213 votes from Mukerian.

Four days back, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and party president JP Nadda had claimed that the party would do better in Punjab and was hoping for an important role for the BJP in government formation in Punjab.

Since 2014, election after election, it has been a trend that the people in Punjab were not swayed by the Modi wave. This was visible in the current elections as well as the magic seems to have failed to sway the Punjabis.

The saffron party was banking upon the polarisation of Hindu votes in the urban areas but that does not look like the scenario. At present, the party’s vote share is around 6.61 per cent, which is not much increase than 2017. Five years back, when the party had contested just 23 seats as an alliance partner with SAD it had got 5.43 per cent votes and had won three seats

This was the first time when the saffronparty was contesting 73 seatsout of 117 and rest were contested by alliance partners Punjab Lok Congress and Shiromani Akali Dal (Sanyukt).

The party left no stone unturned to make its presence felt in the assembly elections.Apart from three rallies of the Prime Minister and 12 union cabinet ministers, two chief ministers Jai Ram Thakur of Himachal Pradesh and Manohar Lal Khattar of Haryana several ministers and leaders from the neighbouring states were pushed into the election campaign.

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