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Amitabh Shukla / Chandigarh
Riding a sympathy and pro
incumbency wave, BJP humbled the Congress in the Dasuya by-election by one of
the biggest margin the constituency has ever seen.
The landslide victory of BJP
candidate Sukhjit Kaur Sahi over her Congress rival Arun Dogra by 47,431 votes
is a record and indicated the anti-Congress mood prevalent amongst the voters
of Punjab , four months after they brought back the Akal
Dal-BJP government back to power in the state. The victorious BJP candidate
secured 77,494 votes while her nearest rival Dogra got 30,063 votes out of the
total 1,12,706 polled votes. PPP candidate Bhupinder Singh managed only 5,149
votes.
Interestingly, the victory margin
of Amarjit Singh Sahi, whose death necessitated the bye-elections was only 6223
votes in the February 2012 elections and 9274 votes in the 2007 polls,
something which was substantially improved by his wife who was nominated by the
BJP to cash in on the sympathy factor.
Bahujan Samaj Party, which
contested the February polls and its candidate got over 5000 votes, did not
contest this time. The move was expected to swing the Dalit voters in favour of
the Congress but the results indicated that sympathy was the overriding factor
along with the "political honeymoon" which a party enjoys soon after
victory in assembly polls. The results also indicated that Manpreet Badal's PPP
has failed to make inroads in the Akali vote bank as its vote share is more or
less similar to what it got in the last polls, over four months ago.
“The by-poll result was a
forceful verdict for good governance and a stamp of approval on the futuristic
vision unfolded by the SAD-BJP alliance in the state,” chief minister Parkash
Singh Badal said after the victory. Terming it as a “historic mandate in favour
of pro-people and development-oriented policies of SAD-BJP government,” Badal
said that the spectacular by-poll result was a triumph of transparent,
pro-people and effective governance of alliance over the divisive politics
adopted by the Congress party. The veteran leader saw the policies of the
central government as one of the contributing factors for the defeat.
Licking his wounds after the
defeat in the Assembly polls followed by the municipal polls and now the
by-polls, the result is being seen as a setback for the Punjab Congress
President Captain Amarinder Singh. The party high command had put him on notice
after the humiliating defeat in the assembly polls and is expected to take a
call on his continuation as the PCC chief to make the party fighting fit for
the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
An undeterred Captain however,
blamed rigging for the defeat of the party. “There was nothing surprising
about the results as the ruling alliance had not only resorted to blatant abuse
of power but had completely subverted the democratic process by rigging the
elections,” the PCC President said. He said, it is no endorsement of the
performance of the government but only betrays its desperation and nervousness
that it had to rig the elections for the victory.
SAD President and Deputy CM,
Sukhbir Singh Badal termed the result as “last nail in the coffin of Congress
Party in Punjab . He said that the result shows that
Congress was totally decimated in the state. Sukhbir, who campaigned
extensively along with his father and other BJP leaders, said that this
by-election would be termed as a trailer for 2014 Lok Sabha polls, in which
SAD-BJP all set to clinch all 13 seats in Punjab.
The victory may not affect the
arithmetic in the Punjab Assembly but comes as a morale booster for the ruling
alliance ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, less than two years away from now.
In the 117-member Punjab Assembly, SAD has 56 seats and its alliance partner
BJP 12. Congress has 46 MLAs and there are three independents. However,
of the three independents, 2 are supporting the Akali Dal and one Congress.
Dasuya in Hoshiarpur district,
bordering Himachal Pradesh, was a traditional Congress bastion till Sahi
managed to wrest it from the Congress in the 2007 polls by defeating Ramesh
Chander Dogra. He again defeated Dogra in the February 2012 polls. The veteran
Dogra, a former minister, did not contest the bye-election citing health
reasons and the party nominated his son Arun Dogra as the candidate. (July 15, 2012)
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