Chandigarh: Hurt and humiliated with its worst-ever electoral show this election, the country’s oldest regional party – Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) which has won just three out of 117 seats – has tougher times ahead.
Crushing the citadel of the over 100-year-old SAD – which is also the country’s second oldest political party after Congress, the February 20 election has had all its top leaders being trounced and that too, by the first-timers of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
For the record, the AAP won 92 seats, Congress, 18, the SAD, 3, its ally BSP, 1, and the BJP, two seats while only one independent candidate could win.
The former two-time CM Capt Amarinder Singh’s Punjab Lok Congress (PLC), SAD-(Sanyukt), a splinter group of SAD, and the farmers' outfit Sanyukt Samaj Morcha (SSM), all went duck.
The most shocking defeat for SAD came in its supremo Parkash Singh Badal, 94, who had, though, already moved into the backdrop due to his age this poll time, getting a drubbing by AAP first-timer Gurmeet Singh Khudian, a former local Congress leader, in Lambi.
Even his son, the SAD chief and former deputy chief minister Sukhbir Badal was beaten by AAP’s greenhorn Jagdeep Kamboj, in Jalalabad constituency.
Sr Badal’s nephew and the SAD firebrand leader Bikram Singh Majithia was defeated by AAP’s first-timer Jeevan Jyot Kaur in Amritsar (East) seat, a social worker known as ``pad woman’’. Majithia was also recently booked in a drug case by Charanjit Singh Channi-led Congress government.
Even five-time MLA and Sr Badal’s nephew Manpreet Badal lost to AAP’s first-timer Jagroop Singh Gill, a former local Congress leader.
The only solace for SAD is that while its only three candidates – Ganieve, who is Majithia’s wife from Majitha, Manpreet Singh Ayali from Dakha and Dr Sukhwinder Sukhi from Banga, have won, its candidates stood at number two position in 46 assembly constituencies. However, Sukhbir Badal is sitting MP from Ferozepur and his wife Harsimrat Kaur is MP from Bathinda.
The SAD chief Sukhbir Badal who does not have an active support of party’s patriarch Badal Sr, however, has also seen SAD’s senior leader Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa parting ways and floating SAD (Sanyukt) over differences with him, last year.
SAD’s vote share has slided from 25.42% in 2017 state polls to 18% in Thursday’s result. In 1997, SAD had won 75 seats with 37.64% vote share but after that, it saw gradual fall. In 2002, it was 31.08%, in 2007, it was 37.09% and in 2012, it was 34.7%.
Why? The political scientists opine that the thumping win of the AAP has proved the people of Punjab sought a solution to various long overdue issues including unemployment and corruption and an end to sand mining and transport mafias, drug cartels, and paid transfers.
