The result of the by-election for the Sangrur Lok Sabha seat is noteworthy not so much for the defeat of the Aam Aadmi Party as for the success of the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) candidate Simranjit Singh Mann. As the seat was vacated by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, it was a political setback for him and his party that it could not be retained. The AAP has lost its voice in the lower house of Parliament. Simranjit Singh Mann’s party has been losing election after election. Mann’s own electoral record has been far from encouraging. In the Assembly elections, he himself lost and the party could not win a single seat. That is what makes his victory sensational. The voting pattern suggests that he won most of the Sikh votes, although it was a five-cornered contest. The vote was decidedly against the chief minister, who the voters felt was responsible for the tragic killing of singer Sidhu Moosewala, whose police security was withdrawn and that too with publicity. For such a community as the Sikhs, who take pride in themselves, it was not confidence-inspiring that their chief minister was taking orders from his Delhi counterpart.
Whatever be the proximate cause of the AAP’s defeat, Simranjit Singh Mann’s return to Parliament will be watched by the whole country. No doubt, he is a talented person, who resigned from the Indian Police Service to protest against Operation Blue Star. Alas, he has also a tendency to take up causes which few will support. For instance, he created an unnecessary controversy when he insisted on his right to carry a proper sword when he entered Parliament House or boarded a flight where only a kirpan with certain specifications was allowed. He did not crown himself with glory by insisting on his “right” – while forfeiting his right to speak in Parliament and expose the wrongdoings of the government. Mann has announced his intention to take up human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir and the tribal areas of the country. Parliament is the right forum to do so. However, to claim that his victory is the victory of the idea of Khalistan is to stretch it far. He wants his victory to be seen as the victory of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who was killed in Operation Blue Star. Had that been the case, Simranjit Singh Mann would not have been losing elections and security deposits for the last two decades. Nothing has happened in Punjab to assume that the voters of Sangrur have suddenly found merit in secession. Mann was clever enough to portray Moosewala as his ardent supporter, though the singer contested the last Assembly election on the Congress ticket. Electorally, it paid rich dividends. There were also other local factors which helped Mann to corner the anti-CM, anti-established party votes. No doubt, he stood shoulder and above those of his rivals in terms of political stature. In other words, there is nothing to suggest that the separatist idea has captured the imagination of the people of Sangrur.
As the saying goes, one swallow does not make a summer. Mann would be doing a great disservice to the Sikh community by giving his victory a separatist twist. At no point of time, even at the height of militancy in the eighties and early nineties, did a majority of the Sikhs support the separatist cause. The Khalistanis were always a fringe section which had greater appeal in Canada and the US than in Punjab. Having said this, the Bhagwant Mann government should not see the rise of the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) lightly. There have been several incidents reported from Punjab which suggest that the separatists have been active in one form or another. A wall poster here or a wall poster there may not mean much but they are, nonetheless, straws in the wind that a sensitive chief minister can ill afford to ignore. There can be no denying that the people of Punjab are fed up with political parties like the Shiromani Akali Dal, the BJP and the Congress. In fact, the reason why they voted massively for the AAP was because of the failure of these parties to redeem themselves. When the farmers’ issue arose, they did not seek the support of these parties while rising up as one man against the three farm laws. It is this aversion for the national parties that resulted in the victory of the AAP. The chief minister will not carry conviction with the masses if he is seen as a puppet in the hands of AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal. Similarly, Simranjit Singh Mann should not squander the goodwill of the people by taking up idiotic separatist causes.
