Votes were cast for all 13 constituencies in Punjab on Saturday in the last phase of the Lok Sabha elections 2024. By 6 pm, as per election commission figures, the border state recorded a 56 per cent voter turn out. The lone seat of Chandigarh also went to polls.
Punjab broadly witnessed an unprecedented four-cornered contest this time with the INDIA bloc members—the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party—contesting separately and traditional partners the Bharatiya Janta Party and the Shiromani Akali Dal choosing to go solo. BJP and SAD had been contesting general elections together since 1996. Besides these four main players, the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) and the Bahujan Samaj Party have also fielded their candidates.
The Congress which bagged eight out of 13 seats in 2019 is trying to capitalize on the anti-incumbency against the AAP, their main rival in Punjab, and farmers angst against the BJP in the agrarian state.
“We honestly stand with the farmers. It was only after I filed a petition on the death of farmer Shubhkaran Singh that the AAP government lodged an FIR,” said Partap Bajwa, a senior Congress leader from the state. The grand old party has also promised a legal MSP, which was at the heart of the farmers protest, if voted to power.
The farmers protests in 2021 and 2024 are likely to cast their shadows on the result on June 4. The BJP has been at the receiving end of the farmers anger since the start of the campaigning in Punjab. The farmers had even opposed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rallies in Patiala about a week ago.
The AAP, which rose to power in Punjab by winning 92 out of 117 assembly seats to form the government in 2022, is the prime factor that has changed the contours of political calculations in the state. The AAP is trying to woo voters through their freebie (free electricity) plank, although situation on the ground suggests that people are not happy with the party for not fulfilling their promises.
There are high stakes for the SAD, especially the Badal family in this election. The party’s political clout has been diminishing in the state with party scion Prakash Singh loosing to AAP’s Gurmeet Singh Khudian from his traditional Lambi seat in 2022 assembly polls. His daughter-in-law and three time MP from Bathinda, Harsimrat Kaur Badal is now contesting against AAP’s Gurmeet Singh Khudian, BJP’s Parampal Kaur, former IAS officer, Congress’s Jeet Sindhu and gangster-turned-politician Lakh Sidhana of SAD (Amritsar).
Other prominent candidates in the fray include four-time MP Preneet Kaur, former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi, three-time MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Ravneet Singh Bittu. While Preneet Kaur is seeking re-election from the Patiala parliamentary constituency, Channi and BJP nominee Sushil Kumar Rinku, who left the AAP just weeks before elections, are in the fray from Jalandhar reserved constituency. Former deputy chief minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa of the Congress and BJP candidate Dinesh Babbu are fighting from Gurdaspur. Punjab Congress chief Amrinder Singh Raja Warring is pitted against former party colleague and now rival, BJP’s Bittu, in Ludhiana.
Pro-separatist candidates, who remained on the margins, are also finding space in this election especially in the aftermath of the farmers protest. Some attribute this to the absence of leadership of the likes of Prakash Singh Badal and Amrinder Singh in Punjab. “Irrespective of whether we are in alliance or not, I believe that a strong SAD is a must to keep peace in Punjab. SAD is the political wing of the Panth. Minority sentiments are easy to exploit. So there has to be a strong leader who is powerful and convincing enough to address the concerns,” said Sunil Jakhar, BJP’s Punjab president.
These concerns stem from the fact that radical candidates are contesting with considerable backing from seats across Punjab. Radical Sikh preacher Amritpal Singh, who is lodged in Assam’s Dibrugarh jail under the National Security Ac,t is fighting from Khadoor Sahib as an independent. From Sangrur, another radical leader and sitting MP, Simranjit Singh Mann, who heads the SAD (Amritsar), is another controversial candidate.
Sarabjit Singh Khalsa, son of Beant Singh, one of the two assassins of Indira Gandhi, is also in the fray from Faridkot.
Polling in Punjab, which has an electorate of around 2.14 crore, began at 7 am. Till 6 pm, 55.65 percent voting had been done in sweltering heat.