JALANDHAR: Having gotten the best from Punjab in the state’s assembly elections about 100 days ago, the Aam Aadmi Party government now faces a test in terms of delivering on its promises on chief minister Bhagwant Mann’s home turf.
For the assembly polls , the party’s entire campaign was stitched around the ‘Delhi model’, but now its performance would also impact its expansion plans for other states, especially poll-bound Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat. In the assembly polls in February-March, Punjab had stunned the country by decimating traditional parties and electing fresh faces. However, now, the dynamics of the electoral battle in Sangrur bypoll, which appeared a cakewalk for AAP till a couple of weeks ago, appear to have changed at a surprising pace and scale, as SAD (Amritsar) president Simranjit Singh Mann has found a lot of traction in the last some days.
In the assembly elections, AAP got over 55% vote share in the nine assembly segments which are part of Sangrur parliamentary seat.
Simranjit Mann getting into the reckoning shows that despite giving a huge mandate to AAP, people are keeping an eye on the state government’s performance. This becomes evident as the support for Simranjit Mann is not swelling due to any organised effort, as his party’s infrastructure cannot be compared with other parties, but it is more organic. In comparison, AAP has the most effective online propaganda machinery.
Just after the huge mandate in assembly elections, AAP faced questions over its Rajya Sabha picks just after forming the government and then also faced criticism for adding riders to the scheme of 300 units of free power, one of the key promises which helped it a lot in gaining ground along with Rs 1,000 to all women above 18 years of age.
While it has tried to balance the earlier Rajya Sabha picks by sending environmentalist Baba Balbir Singh Seechewal to the upper house, it has once again stated highlighting the free 300 units of power from July 1.
It was Sidhu Moose Wala’s murder on May 29 which jolted the people in a big way across the state and the government faced questions. The killing had come a day after AAP flaunted his name among those whose security was withdrawn or curtailed and projected it as an attack on VVIP culture, even as it was a temporary and secret decision.
Apart from taking other steps, AAP government hopes to gain from quick action against corruption, for which it has also jailed its minister Vijay Singla, a former Congress minister and an MLA. An IAS officer was arrested by the vigilance bureau on Monday.
Punjab has usually remained an outlier to national political trends and the results in the latest assembly elections again confirmed this. However, now, AAP faces the challenge of keeping the electorate in Punjab happy and gaining in perception in other states.
