Stung by atrocities, Dalits shun SAD to power Cong victory

The Congress’ spectacular surge in Punjab was powered by Dalits, who comprise a third of the state and deserted the ruling Akali Dal following a string of caste atrocities.

The election also marked the return of the community to the Congress fold after over a decade and the complete collapse of the BSP. The Congress won almost two-third of the 34 reserved constituencies while the Akali DalBJP secured just four seats – indicating the BJP’s strategy of appointing Dalit leader Vijay Sampla as chief had failed.

In the Dalit stronghold of Doaba where the community has over 40% presence in each of the 23 seats, the Congress won 14. “The Dalits voted out Akalis for the high-handedness of their goons, be it fight for lands in villages or attacks on them,” said Dalit intellectual Des Raj Kalli. In 2012, the Akalis had won 24 of these reserved constituencies.

Of Doaba’s eight reserved segments, the SAD-BJP won four — Adampur, Phillaur, Phagwara and Banga. SAD’s experiment to give ticket to a Dalit from a nonreserved segment of Kapurthala that has a high population of Valmikis backfired and the Congress won by a margin of 28,817 votes.

Dalits also appeared to have rejected the AAP, despite the fledging outfit’s repeated overtures and promise to appoint a SC candidate as deputy chief minister. The AAP won just 10 reserved constituencies – all of them in the southern Malwa region where the party had heavily invested. Experts say incidents such as the chopping of limbs of a Dalit man and the killing of several Dalits in land disputes in the last two years made the community move away from the Akalis. But what was more remarkable was the decimation of the BSP that crashed to just 1% voteshare.