Former Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh’s absence from the election campaign owing to his health has added to the BJP’s many woes in Punjab.

Amarinder was the BJP’s big trump card in Punjab after he switched over from the Congress. The saffron party, which does not have a tall state leader like him, was looking forward to harnessing his goodwill to make inroads in the state where it is contesting alone for the first time without its nearly three-decade-old ally Akali Dal. But he has been absent and was not seen even when Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a public rally in his home turf of Patiala, where his wife Preneet Kaur is contesting elections on a BJP ticket.

The 82-year-old Amarinder’s absence is only one among the BJP’s several problems in Punjab. It is also confronting farmers’ anger for being the party that introduced and passed the three farm laws against which peasants, mostly from Punjab and Haryana, laid a siege at Delhi’s borders for over a year. The laws were repealed, but the farmers’ other demands, including a legal guarantee for MSP, have remained unfulfilled and their anger is chiefly directed at the BJP. They are not letting the BJP campaign in Punjab, blocking them from villages, a fact acknowledged by Preneet Kaur publicly.

The party is fighting AAP in a four-cornered contest, with the Congress and SAD being other players in the elections to 13 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

The BJP has fielded former ambassador Taranjit Singh Sandhu, who joined the party close to the polls, to fight from Amritsar, former Congress MP and Amarinder Singh’s wife Preneet Kaur from Patialia, former Congress MP Ravneet Singh Bittu from Ludhiana and former AAP MP Sushil Kumar from Jalandhar.

It moved the party’s sitting Delhi MP, Hans Raj Hans, to contest from reserved seat of Faridkot.

The party is strong in some constituencies like Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, and Amritsar, given that a majority of 37 per cent of the Hindu population resides in these places. In 2019 elections, the BJP had won Gurdaspur and Hoshiarpur seats, but party sources said, that Akali Dal votes had also contributed to that which is missing this time.

“The BJP’s election strategy hinges on the performance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, especially on the national security front, Hindu consolidation, and attacking AAP and its convenor, Arvind Kejriwal, on corruption and drug issues,” explained a State leader.

Besides, the party is also bringing out contradictions between the INDIA bloc partners, Congress and AAP. Both are fighting separately in Punjab, while they are together in Delhi, where the AAP is also ruling.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has held three rallies so far in the state, said in Jalandhar on May 24 that AAP is a party of “wholesale traders of drugs.”

Modi has also been making the impassioned appeal that he is not anti-farmer. In fact, in one of the interviews with a television channel, he said that if someone goes through his government’s initiatives in the last ten years, he will conclude that he did substantial work for Punjab and more than others.

To build an emotional connection with Sikhs, Modi said at Jalandhar that he brought in the Citizenship Amendment Act to give citizenship to Hindu-Sikh brothers left on the other side of the border due to partition. He, however, attacked Congress for opposing the CAA.

A state BJP leader admitted that the party has a big challenge getting Sikh votes in the absence of the tie-up with Akali Dal. The BJP central leadership decided to go solo on the recommendation from the state unit on the plea that it would give an opportunity to grow in Punjab. An attempt made by the Akalis for an alliance to fight polls together was denied by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, said BJP sources in Punjab.

The party’s efforts for Hindu consolidation by raking up the Ram Mandir issue may not yield as much since the majority community is not as that religious in Punjab as it may be elsewhere, said a political observer.

Related Topics