Political fortunes of Badals, Amarinder, Hooda, Chautalas and Bishnoi at stake

POLLS WOULD BE THE BAROMETER OF POPULAR WILL

The “election season” has begun in the region and is set to dominate the political discourse for the next five months. As these elections coincide with the half way mark of the UPA government at the Centre, many poll analysts and psephologists would see the results as a sort of mid-term referendum on the performance of the Congress-led UPA government apart from obviously that of the state governments concerned.

SGPC elections across the region in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh last Sunday heralded the “election season” and the process will conclude with the Assembly elections in Punjab in February 2012. After a popular government is elected in Punjab, a similar process would be set in motion for Himachal Pradesh which is slated to elect its new assembly later next year.

Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) was expected to win and it performed remarkably well in the SGPC polls – one of its best performances in recent times. It won 157 seats, improving on its past performance and vanquishing the motley opposition. But what has worried the SAD poll managers is the reduction in the margin of victory. While the number of seats which the party got is indeed impressive, the reduced margin has increased the worry lines of the SAD workers and leaders and sent them scurrying for cover.

Publicly Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and Deputy CM and SAD President Sukhbir Badal are gloating on the performance but as veterans of the game, they also know that the real battle lies ahead and the SGPC polls cannot be held as the barometer of public mood for the Assembly polls. Moreover, the votes which the SAD got in the polls are only a fraction of the total votes for the assembly polls. It cannot be even called a representative sample size for a pollster to predict the polls as only the Sikh voters were enrolled, not the entire population. But the results obviously worried the Congress. Even after propping up the Panthic Morcha through supporters like Paramjit Singh Sarna of the DSGMC and Surjit Singh Barnala of SAD (Longowal), it failed to cut ice with the Sikh voters ahead of the Assembly polls. Had the Panthic Morcha won even a dozen seats, Congress would have been much happier.

As the din of the SGPC polls is yet to die down, the challenge of the Hisar bye-election in Haryana stares the main political parties in their face. It is the first Lok Sabha bye-election after the Anna Hazare storm and it is hardly surprising to find that the parties contesting the polls have made corruption the main issue. “Who is more corrupt?” seems to be the tagline as all the three main contenders in the fray are charging each other of indulging in corruption.

The results of Hisar would throw open a wide range of possibilities for the parties. While a victory for the Congress would cement the position of Bhupinder Singh Hooda, a loss would further embolden the detractors of the CM within the party. More so, when the party candidate Jai Prakash is a personal choice of Hooda and he has left no stone unturned to ensure that nothing goes wrong in the polls.

For the Indian National Lok Dal, the implications could be profound. The second most important leader in the party after his father O P Chautala, Ajay Chautala is contesting the polls – the third generation of Chaudhary Devi Lal. Battling corruption cases in a Delhi court, if Chautala romps home, it could well be a vindication of what the INLD has been claiming all through that the charges of corruption are politically motivated. However, if Chautala is defeated, it could well be a long spell in opposition and that corruption is indeed a poll issue.

The third major player here, Kuldeep Bishnoi, is fighting a battle for political survival. Having lost five of his MLAs to Congress after the 2009 assembly polls, this is the first election which he is fighting without the larger than life figure of his father. If Bishnoi wins, it could well mean that the legacy of Bhajan Lal has been passed on to his son. As his party HJC is in a long-term alliance with the BJP, a loss could well mean that the non-Jat voters which the party is eyeing, have rejected them and it will take time and effort to build the alliance.

Sandwiched between Hisar bye-polls and the Punjab assembly polls is the elections to the Municipal Corporation of Chandigarh, sometime in December. Congress is ruling the corporation in the joint Capital of the two states and BJP is set to throw a major challenge to the party. As the impact of Hazare’s movement was largely confined to the urban areas of the country, the election result would for the first time reveal the mindset of the urban voters. If Congress is rejected, it could well mean that the urban voters have rejected the way the entire Hazare movement was tackled and a similar trend could be there in other urban areas of the country as well. If Congress wins, the poll analysts could well argue that Hazare’s impact was only on television and not amongst the urban voters who actually take the trouble of going to the polling station and use their franchise. The BJP does not really have much to lose here but a win would certainly bolster the morale of the cadres.

But undoubtedly, the biggest battle of the “electoral season” would be the February 2012 Assembly polls in Punjab where the ruling SAD-BJP combine is fighting anti-incumbency and a resurgent Congress. For the psephologists, predicting the outcome has been very safe so far – both the Akalis and the Congress share power every five years. This trend has been going on for a few decades and according to this trend, it is the turn of the Congress now.

But what has given hope to the Akalis is the fact that the party’s development card has found many takers and the announcement spree of the government has forced people to take notice. The SGPC elections also set into motion the electoral machine of the party and made it aware about the areas to concentrate on. Moreover, the Akalis think that if the BJP governments of Raman Singh in Chhatisgarh and Shivraj Singh Chauhan in Madhya Pradesh and Nitish Kumar’s JDU-BJP government in Bihar can be voted back to power, why can’t they?

Congress, nevertheless, is over confident. It is taking the trend in its stride and leaders claim that the Akalis cannot be voted to power come what may. PCC President and contender for Chief Ministership Captain Amarinder Singh is so confident that he already has drawn a list of what the party will do after coming to power.

Battle lines are drawn. Swords are out. Politics is in the air and the fortunes of all the prominent players in the arena at stake. Only the voters know, who survives and who doesn’t. (Sunday, Sept 25, 2011)

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