Heart of Punjab: Eye on ’27 elections, politicians reach out to flood victims

Punjab is still coming to terms with the scale of devastation from what is being described as the worst floods in recent history. The impact of losing this kharif paddy crop is still being assessed. The bleak possibility of the next rabi wheat crop is already being talked about. People are returning to their homes to assess the loss of life and livestock. The fear of disease from stagnant water and the carcasses of animals in the water looms large.

And while the people from within Punjab and all over the country have been helping each other — rebuilding homes, helping them prepare their fields for wheat sowing or simply adopting villages for long-term rehabilitation — the reactions of political parties are increasingly made with one eye on the Vidhan Sabha elections just 16 months from now.

This past week, the visit of PM Modi to Punjab sparked off a war of words between the ruling AAP and the Opposition BJP on the amount of money available in the state Disaster Response Fund.

The AAP has asked its MPs to chip in from their MPLAD funds, and the government has prioritised money from the limited resources in the state treasury for flood relief and getting Punjab’s 2,384 villages back on track. In fact, the performance of its MLAs and MLA aspirants is being assessed based on the relief work they carry out, how they showcase it on their social media and what impact this has had.

The BJP, through the states where it is in power, is also helping with a “coordinated response” to provide relief material, all the while maintaining that the Rs 1,600-crore grant in aid of Punjab by the Prime Minister is only an initial grant, and more is yet to come.

The most notable outcome of the PM’s visit is that the BJP seems to have decided that it will make a serious bid for power, on its own, in 2027. BJP sources seemed flushed with the confidence that their vote share had been going up with every election and in any case, their erstwhile alliance partner, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) is now split into three outfits. This is quite a turnaround for the party, which even as late as the Lok Sabha elections last year, was not even welcome in rural Punjab. It is thus that the party is sending several of its Central ministers to the state to build a connect with the affected people.

As for the SAD, party president Sukhbir Singh Badal has been seen openly distributing cash to the flood-affected, ignoring jibes aimed at his party for misusing funds of the SGPC, over which his party has traditionally held sway. Badal, whose political fortunes have been on the decline since his party has split so often, says that distributing cash relief is one way of giving to the farmer when he most needs it.

The Congress, not to be left behind, is organising its people and resources from all over the state, stationing them in the worst flood-affected areas, while its senior leaders, too, have been visiting the flood-affected areas. The party has taken each parliamentary constituency as its focal unit, which it is dividing up between its people and resources. The party’s role becomes all the more important since five of the flood-ravaged constituencies are represented by the Congress — Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Jalandhar, Patiala and Ferozepur.