Why stunning win in Punjab is an opportunity and challenge alike for AAP

The Aam Aadmi Party’s historic Assembly poll victory in Punjab, where it decimated the traditionally entrenched Congress party and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), has opened up endless opportunities for Arvind Kejriwal’s decade-old outfit to mount an aggressive expansionist drive across hitherto uncharted political territories. However, the coming months are also expected to throw up, in equal measure, mean challenges for AAP in Punjab.

The principal factor that took AAP to its 92-seat tally in a House of 117 members – the highest ever for any political outfit in the state since Haryana was carved out of it in 1966 – was the evident yearning for ‘badlaav’ (change) in Punjab’s politics. Past misadventures of the party were promptly forgotten by the voters who, as the results clearly show, were desperate for an alternative to the Congress, Akalis, or even the Amarinder Singh-BJP front.

It can be argued that the AAP was also a major beneficiary of the morass that had engulfed the ruling Congress party. The fast unravelling mess within the ruling Congress – appointment of the tantrum-prone Navjot Sidhu as the state unit chief, unceremonious dumping of Amarinder Singh and his subsequent rebellion, the long list of unfulfilled poll promises – did not stop with the party’s self-proclaimed masterstroke of nominating Charanjit Singh Channi as Punjab’s first Dalit Sikh CM. Instead, Channi’s appointment made things worse for the Grand Old Party and the 32 per cent Dalit vote that the Congress had hoped to secure through its new CM and retain power in the state, failed miserably.

Channi, the only candidate in Punjab who was contesting from two seats was comprehensively defeated by AAP candidates from both Chamkaur Sahib and Bhadaur constituencies. Sidhu too lost the polls from Amritsar East as did former CM Rajinder Kaur Bhattal from Lehra, Deputy CM OP Soni from Amritsar Central and finance minister Manpreet Badal from Bathinda Urban – all seats that voted for AAP. Deputy chief minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa barely managed to retain his Dera Baba Nanak seat with a victory margin of 466 votes.

But AAP’s wave wasn’t just about the Congress’s poor performance. If the Delhi-based party wiped the Congress out, it did the same to the Akalis as well as Amarinder Singh. The Akali Dal, which had become a dynasty-run party over the past two decades under the Badal family, faced its biggest humiliation in Lambi and Jalalabad where AAP candidates defeated former CM Parkash Singh Badal and his son Sukhbir Singh Badal, respectively. Similarly, in Patiala Rural, the AAP trounced former chief minister and Amarinder Singh to effectively end the Patiala royal’s five-decade-long political career on a momentous low.

For the AAP, which had won 20 seats in the state in 2017 and then steadily lost over half of these MLAs to defections over the next five years, the 2022 victory couldn’t be sweeter, more so considering that till about six months ago, the party had neither a narrative nor a local leadership that had been endorsed by its high command in Delhi.

However, over the past two months, as the Congress continued to slip under the weight of its internal acrimony, the AAP showed remarkable resilience for re-launching itself. It learned from its 2017 mistake of not projecting a local CM face and instead banking entirely on Delhi’s Kejriwal to deliver a victory. The declaration of comedian-turned politician and Sangrur MP Bhagwant Mann as the AAP’s CM face changed that and though the party still sought votes in the name of Kejriwal and his Delhi model, there is no denying that a local, Jat Sikh face gave the required buoyancy to the party’s victory prospects.

What next?

The AAP has, as it has done repeatedly in Delhi, promised the moon to Punjab. Beyond populist promises like providing free electricity or creating jobs, the party has promised prompt and stern action in the sacrilege cases, wiping out corruption, bringing Punjab out of its near financial bankruptcy and, arguably, most importantly, cracking down on all sorts of mafia – sand, liquor, drugs.

These were all promises that the Congress had made in 2017 and, evidently, failed to deliver on. Several of these promises were made by the Congress again this time round but, obviously, the party found no takers and was reduced to just 18 seats in the state assembly, down from the 77 it had won in 2017.

The fate that the Congress suffered should be a lesson for the AAP as it moves forward in Punjab. The verdict is for visible change, not just a rhetorical one. How Mann in Chandigarh and Kejriwal in Delhi deliver it needs to be seen but a good place to begin would be by recognising the challenges first.

The Congress faced its rout, in substantial measure, due to interference by the party high command in Delhi. Kejriwal and Mann will need to give Punjabis the confidence that decisions concerning them are being taken in the office of the Chief Minister in Chandigarh and not in Delhi. Given Kejriwal’s reputation of centralising all key decision-making, it is incumbent on him – much more than on Mann – to give his Punjab counterpart the freedom to act independently.

Administering Delhi, a quasi-state, is very different from ruling Punjab that has full statehood. Kejriwal’s well-known grouse, particularly in moments when he is cornered for administrative lapses, has been that Delhi’s complex power structure doesn’t allow him to function as a CM of a full-fledged state. With AAP now set to rule Punjab, Kejriwal should not see this as an opportunity to personally act as CM of the state with Mann acting as a mere rubber stamp.

As CM of a full-fledged state, Mann will have exponentially higher administrative powers and autonomy than what Kejriwal enjoys in Delhi. Unlike the Punjab CM, his Delhi counterpart needs to seek the Lieutenant Governor’s nod for many key decisions, especially after the BJP-led Centre amended the GNCTD Act last year.

A large number of the new AAP lawmakers are turncoats from the Congress, Akali Dal or the BJP who hopped on to Kejriwal’s bandwagon after their parent parties refused to award their services. As such, while the party and Mann may give the visage of a new order in the state, fact remains that the new order is also an effort to camouflage the old. The challenge, though, will be for Mann as CM to ensure that those who AAP has imported from the traditional parties don’t burden the new government and party with the same taint that haunted the Congress or Akalis.

An equally large number of the newly-elected AAP MLAs are also rank-outsiders to electoral politics and the complex task of administration. While this may be a blessing in disguise and allow for some out-of-box thinking to resolve many of Punjab’s problems, any slip up will also end up giving reins of the state in the hands of the same bureaucracy that has, through the tenures of the Congress and the Akalis, wreaked the very havoc that Punjab wants deliverance from.

Also read: Will AAP’s Punjab win strengthen India’s alternative political front?

With a litany of populist promises to fulfil, the new AAP government will need a robust Treasury, which, unfortunately for Mann, Punjab, with its debt-burden of nearly Rs 3 lakh crore does not have. Through the poll campaign, Kejriwal, his points man for Punjab, Raghav Chaddha and Mann, had no clear answers to queries about the lack of state resources that will be needed to deliver the AAP’s many promises.

As a state that has a long and tense international border with Pakistan as well as a bloody past of militancy, the AAP will also need to keep a close watch on matters of internal security. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already asserted that he will be personally invested in the security issues of Punjab, which naturally means the BJP is already working on a plan to expand its presence in the state where it has traditionally been an also-ran. The AAP will, thus, need to do much more than invoke Bhagat Singh every time issues of internal security or nationalism become political concerns for its leadership – as they have in the not-so-distant and even very recent past.

The other clear challenge would be to resolve the issue of stubble burning that binds Delhi with Punjab. So far, as stubble burning in Punjab clogs the Delhi air, Kejriwal’s ready excuse has been that he can do nothing to prevent what is happening in a state that isn’t under AAP jurisdiction. The Punjab verdict changes this reality. As an agrarian state where the farming community is also a key voting bloc, Mann and Kejriwal will have to work towards a solution for stubble burning that doesn’t become a burden for Punjab’s farmers.

Later this year, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh go to polls and AAP has indicated that after Punjab, these would be the states it would want to conquer in its long quest of replacing the Congress as the national alternative to the BJP. While the party clearly has a long way to go before it realises its dream of a pan-India footprint, Punjab is a clear indicator of AAP’s capacity to broaden its appeal beyond Delhi. Whether it actually succeeds in doing so would, however, depend on how it runs Punjab. The clock has begun to tick.