Author: Dr. Ronki Ram (ronkiram@yahoo.co.in)
Shaheed Bhagat Singh Chair Professor of Political Science, Panjab University, Chandigarh
Visiting Professor, Centre for Sikh and Panjabi Studies, University of Wolverhampton (UK)
The victory of Simranjit Singh Mann of Shiromani Akali Dal-Amritsar [SAD(A)] in the Sangrur Parliamentary by-election shows that nothing lasts long in the quicksands of electoral democracies if it does not serve the interests of the concerned electorate. It is quite interesting to find that in a constituency where 72.4% votes were polled in the 2019 Parliamentary election, only 45% of the total electorates turned up to cast their votes in the by-election on June 23, 2022, which represents a 27.1% drop. What does it signify when, within the electoral eyeblink period of three months, the AAP that won the Punjab Assembly elections held in February 2022 with absolute majority (92 Assembly seats of the total 117), has failed to retain its only Lok Sabha seat – vacated by Bhagwant Mann, Chief Minister of Punjab – to contest the Punjab Assembly election? Why did the electorate of the Sangrur parliamentary constituency – and hometown of the newly minted Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and often known as the citadel of AAP in Punjab – prefer Simranjit Singh Mann over the AAP? What does it say about which direction Punjab will move in the coming days?
Simranjit Singh Mann attributed his victory to the martyrdom of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his young militant brigade. While talking with the media after his victory on June 26, 2022, Mann said “It is a win of our party workers and the teachings that Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale has given.” Another possible factor behind Mann’s astonishing victory could be the emotional mass appeal generated in the aftermath of the brutal murder of Shubdeep Singh aka Sidhu Moosewala, an internationally known rapper and songwriter, by channeling people’s anger against the AAP government seemingly compromising his security despite regular threats to his life. Simranjit Singh Mann had reportedly promised to pay the rapper a visit at his native village Moosa in Mansa district just a few days before his brutal murder. Mann eventually went there on his Antim Ardas (last prayer ceremony).
The emotional mass appeal was further intensified by the occurrence of some law and order related incidents within the state and the neighboring states of Himachal Pradesh and Haryana, since the formation of the AAP government in Punjab and also by the failure of the latter in resolving the Bargari sacrilege cases and Kotkapura & Behbal Kalan police firing among others. Simranjit Singh Mann also put on record his gratitude to Deep Sidhu, another notable emerging figure on the political turf of Punjab politics, who died under mysterious circumstances in a car accident on his way from Delhi to Punjab.
Why Simranjit Singh Mann is different
Moreover for quite some time now, as articulated by Pramod Kumar, political analyst and Director, Institute for Development and communication, Chandigarh, there has been a general inclination on the part of all traditional political parties in Punjab towards the adoption of some sort of a Panthic discourse in one or another form. A case in point: the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the SAD-Badal fielded Kewal Singh Dhillon and Kamaldeep Kaur Rajoana, respectively, in the Sangrur bypoll. Earlier there were accusations against some political parties of having connections with terror outfits. There is also a common impression in Punjab that if one has to choose from amongst the Panthic discourses being offered by varied contenders for political power, then it’s better to choose the original one – hence Simranjit Singh Mann.
Simranjit Singh Mann is not perceived as a threat by the people of Punjab. He is one among them. His reference to Bhindranwale and others of the militancy period should not be an issue. One has to understand that the contested phenomenon of Bhindranwale is perceived differently by different people. For some, he is a freedom fighter; for others, he’s a militant. After his victory in the Sangrur bypoll, Mann spoke about the ‘army committing atrocities in Kashmir and killing Muslims on a daily basis’, and ‘the tribal people in Bihar and Chhattisgarh [who] are being shot dead calling them Naxalites’ according news agency ANI. But being an elected member of the Lok Sabha, he has to work within the purview of the Constitution.
His victory should not be interpreted as the re-emergence of a fundamentalist politics dominated by the so-called Khalistan-centric thought process. During his earlier stint in the parliamentary democratic politics in the country, Simranjit Singh Mann, recalled Rajiv Lochan, an academic of modern history at Panjab University, “used to talk about pursuing the Khalistan cause through electoral democracy and not to follow the path of violence.” The victory of Simranjit Singh Mann is more a demonstration of people’s anger with the functioning of the AAP government, as earlier during the State Assembly elections in February 2022, they expressed their wrath in dismantling the duopoly of SAD & INC and bringing in their place the AAP. It is against such a backdrop, one needs to situate Mann’s victory in the Sangrur bypoll. As far as the issue of Khalistan is concerned, so far there is no scope for its overall acceptance in Punjab at large.
So far, the most striking factor behind Mann’s stunning victory could be the pre-eminence accorded by the leadership of AAP in Punjab to its counterpart in Delhi. After Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s oath-taking ceremony at Khatkar Kalan, the native village of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, for the formation of the government by Bhagwant Mann, the people of Punjab expected to see him focusing wholly on the many urgent demands in the state. The state itself has been corroded by decades of criminal misgovernance by a succession of inept and deeply corrupt political regimes. This misgovernance, in turn, had given free rein to multifarious mafias: sand, real-estate, transport, drugs, cable, etc. They certainly did not take kindly to the state administration being puppeteered from Delhi.
AAP continued the same old playbook
Three months ago when AAP was elected to power in Punjab, the people of the state gave a clear message – we are saying goodbye to all traditional parties, which were in agreement with each other to rule Punjab in turns. People were fed up with such a vicious power circle run by the traditional political parties. They gave the opportunity to AAP for providing good governance, a clear indication that they wanted a change. But within a short period of three months, since the formation of the government by the AAP, they have come to realize that even this option failed to work well for them, compelling them to incline towards Simranjit Singh Mann.
Moreover, the people of Punjab are highly sensitive to issues which offend their ethnic pride. They broke the mold of Punjab politics by ensuring that the AAP in Punjab defeated all the traditional/mainstream political parties in the recent Assembly elections in an attempt to put an end to the deeply entrenched family (SAD-Badal) and dynastic rule (Indian National Congress). However the expectation was that once the AAP had won in the Punjab Assembly elections, it should govern independently of any outside influence to deliver what it had promised to the electorate.
Before and during the Sangrur Lok Sabha by-elections, there was a general impression that the AAP government in Punjab had failed to demonstrate its mettle in independently handling the state administration. It has neither been allegedly focusing on the resolution of core issues in Punjab, nor allowing its indigenous cadres and leadership to grow. There is a common belief among the people that the day-to-day political and administrative affairs are controlled by the AAP’s central leadership in Delhi.
They were told to be unhappy and dissatisfied with the AAP over Rajya Sabha nominations from Punjab. To their utter dismay, the newly formed government also failed in handling many core issues of Punjab. Many promised guarantees to people during the Assembly election campaign are yet to be realized, particularly Rs. 1000 for every woman above eighteen years of age.
The people of Punjab have realized that Bhagwant Mann’s government is not run by those who they had elected three months ago. Even the leaders are also feeling unwanted because nothing they say is considered important. The AAP has not come up to their expectation, It is alleged that the rank and file of AAP do not have any say in local governance of state and even its Ministers and MLAs seem to have been side-lined. There is a lack of personal contact between the latter and people. Moreover, the nature of the election campaign conducted in the Sangrur parliamentary constituency convinced the electorates that rather than a contest between the AAP and the rest of the traditional/mainstream political parties in the state, it was a demonstration of the hegemony of the central leadership of the AAP in Punjab. Even during the February 2022 State Assembly elections, the entire election campaign was Arvind Kejriwal centric.
The outcome of this closely-watched five cornered electoral contest has serious political implications for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections in 2024 on the one hand, and the emerging configuration of region-based identity politics in the borderland state of Punjab on the other. There is general consensus across political and ideological spectra that the people of Punjab are completely disenchanted by the ad nauseam political gimmicks played on them earlier by the political duopoly of Congress and SAD and now by the failure of the AAP to run the state government on its own terms without any interference from outside. Under such circumstances what options remain for the politically astute in Punjab? Is there any possibility of the emergence of a regional political force within the state? What could be an ideology and road map of that possible regional political force? Of course there is plentiful social and political capital available within the society of this North-western borderland state of India, and given the volatile state of affairs within this region, it would not be an insurmountable task to build on the apparent neglect of the people and their cultural sentiments and emotionally rally them behind a regional political force championing their cause. However, there is still enough space for the state leadership of the AAP to redeem the waning trust of the people of Punjab but only by burnishing its credentials as the voice of the people of the state and situating itself in a total command of the governance of the statecraft without any outside interference whatsoever from any quarter. But the most difficult and complex question of all is this: Can Bhagwant Mann muster enough support on his own from within the rank and file of the AAP in Punjab without the confidence and political backing of Arvind Kejriwal – the supremo of AAP? If not then would it be possible for Simranjit Singh Mann to fill the vacuum in near future with a new political mass based on regional identity-based politics? These are complex open ended questions that need to be pondered over rather more critically.
(Edited by Alex Prosi)