The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Vote today: Dalits, youths hold the key to Punjab Assembly
AS PUNJAB goes to vote on Saturday, all eyes will be on which way two main voting blocks — youths and Dalits — swing. These two groups, more than any demographic divide, could play the most important role in deciding which party or combination gets to rule Punjab for the next five years.
This is the main reason why all three main players — the ruling SAD-BJP combine, Congress and AAP — have gone out of their way to lure voters from these two groups into their fold.
Of the total 2 crore voters, 1.06 crore are male and 94.10 lakh female and 415 belong to the third gender. In Punjab, the rural-urban divide, another important factor in poll results, is 63:37.
Observers feel the main contest for the 117 seats is between the AAP and Congress, although, in the past few days, the SAD-BJP combine also seems to have recovered some lost ground.
It remains to be seen if the agrarian, panthic vote, the core votebank of the Akali Dal, remains loyal to it despite widespread anger over lack of action on the issue of desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib and the open support that controversial Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda has announced for the SAD-BJP combine.
As things stand, while the AAP is poised to perform much better than the other parties in the Malwa (69 seats) region, the erstwhile citadel of the Akali party, to form the government, it will also have to get respectable number of seats in Majha (25 constituencies) and Doaba (23 seats).
And, here comes a crucial factoid: No party or combine can hope to form the government in Punjab without securing more than half seats in two out of the three regions.
If AAP, for example, hopes to form the next government it will have to secure the majority seats in Malwa, which appears quite possible, and also get the majority seats in the other two regions - unless it sweeps Malwa as well as one of the other regions. Ditto for the Congress. In the 2007 elections, which the SAD-BJP combine won, the alliance won just 24 of the (then) 65 constituencies in Malwa region, but made up for the lack of numbers by almost sweeping the Doaba (25 seats then) and Majha (27 seats then) regions by winning 20 and 24 seats, respectively.
In the 2012 Assembly elections, it was the overwhelming Dalit support to the SADBJP combine, especially in the Doaba region, courtesy the highly-populistic Atta-dal Scheme, that ensured the surprise repeat of the Parkash Singh Badal-led government.
However, this time, the pre-poll announcement by the AAP that in the eventuality of its victory, a Dalit MLA would be made the deputy chief minister as well as aggressive campaigning by Congress chief ministerial candidate and party’s biggest vote-catcher in the state — Captain Amarinder Singh — could queer the pitch for the ruling combine.
In the 2012 elections, of the total 34 reserved seats, the SAD-BJP combine won 24 seats while the Congress won only 10.
While Dalits in Punjab have never traditionally voted as a single block, except in the 1992 elections when they voted in a big way for the BSP, this changed in the 2012 polls when the Dalits came out in large numbers to vote for the ruling alliance. But with the BJP campaign in the state this time nothing to talk about, and the SAD battling tough anti-incumbency as well as charges against senior leaders, they can’t take Dalit votes as a done deal.
Adding to the woes of the SAD is the fact that both Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and his son and Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal, who is also party president, were forced to spend unusually large amount of campaign time in their own constituencies, Lambi and Jalalabad, respectively, due to strong candidates against them.
While the elder Badal is locked in a threeway contest with Captain Amarinder Singh and AAP’S Jarnail Singh, Sukhbir will have to get the better of AAP Sangrur MP Bhagwant Mann and Congress’s Ludhiana MP Ravnit Singh Bittu.
Apart from the Dalits, the other major votebank is the youths. With drugs, corruption and unemployment becoming poll issues, both the Congress and AAP have tried to woo the youths, especially first-time voters, offering a slew of freebies and lure of jobs and corruption-free governance.
There are many who feel the AAP campaign led by Dehi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and its focus on fielding youthful, new faces in many seats could yield it rich dividends.
As for the Congress, this election will also be a final test of whether Amarinder retains his charisma and whether that charisma translates into votes. His party did almost as well as the SAD in Malwa in 2012, but fared poorly in Majha and Doaba, the main reason he didn’t return to power then.