Peoples Pulse, a Hyderabad based research organisation engaged in social and political research, predicted that Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is a front-runner for power in forthcoming assembly elections of Punjab. After studying ground realities, it’s team come to the conclusion that despite several setbacks on account of organisational split and expulsions of leaders, AAP continues to hold the momentum gained in 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
According to its detailed study, the current political mood of the electorates happen to be a strong anti-Akali sentiment running high across the three sub-regions of Punjab. In most of the constituencies, they would vote for a party that would ensure the defeat of Akalis.
Peoples Pulse found that AAP emerges as the default beneficiary as besides youths, facing the problems of unemployment and institutional corruption, enchanted by the theme of ‘change and new party’, a section of the Jatt-Sikhs, a dominant social constituency, traditionally the support base of Akalis
Moreover, the 2015 issue of ‘desecration of Guru Granth Sahib and subsequent police firing upon the protesting Sikhs’have not only angeredthe panthik (religious) minded Jatt-Sikh voters but also constituted AAPas the ‘New-Akali’.
The ‘drug menace’ affecting the Malwa and Majha region in general and border districts in particular, have further compounded the post-green revolution agrarian distress, leading to the loss of a generation in many villages.
The popular perception of senior Akali leaders patronising the illicit drug trade, the reluctance of Congress to take up the issue and AAP’s raising the issue in an aggressive way by naming a senior minister as the patron of the drug trade have enhanced AAP’s image as a better savoir of Punjab vis a vis Congress, even though the AAP-Congress dynamics varies from region to region.
Fourthly, the ironical feature of Punjab being a state with highest percentage of Dalits (32%) without having a strong Dalit politics wherein the prospect of Congress getting a lion’s share of community votes would be partially affected by the incumbent government’s massive welfare and religious program earmarked exclusively for the Dalits as it may ensure a further split among their voting putting Congress at a disadvantage.
