The SAD-BJP alliance created history in Punjab on Tuesday by recapturing power in the state. No party ever in the history of the state has done this before. Interestingly, the below-par performance of the Congress could also be attributed to the fact that it relied too much on history in their hope of victory.
The Congress seemed to have taken victory for granted in the Punjab Assembly elections. Congress state leaders most certainly failed to put in that extra effort to match the very long and sustained campaign by the Akalis.
The fact that the state Congress failed to come out with a positive agenda, and instead tried to attack only Mr Parkash Singh Badal’s, did not help.
The personal attack against the Badals has definitely not been liked by people in Punjab.
The personality battle between Capt. Amarinder Singh and Mr Parkash Singh Badal, on display during the campaigning, has most certainly been won by the latter.
Capt. Singh, who was portrayed by the Akalis in their campaign as a “hedonistic Maharaja” and “not easily accessible to the public”, failed to change this perception floated by the Akalis.
On the other hand, the SAD-BJP combine captured 68 seats to beat the incumbency factor. This is no mean feat in a state like Punjab where people are known for voting out incumbent governments. The factors that went into this surprisingly good performance of the SAD-BJP combine are many.
However, the one very important factor that went into the victory of the Akali Dal is that there was well-thought-out and well-executed election management.
Party president Sukhbir Singh Badal can take credit for the fact that he put the Akali Dal into election mode more then a year before the elections.
The fact that chief minister Parkash Singh Badal as well as Mr Sukhbir Singh Badal were accessible to the people through Sangat Darshan (public interaction) programmes has been able to create a perception in the public mind that the Akali leadership is easily accessible to the general masses.
Even the charges of corruption levelled against the Akalis this time by the Congress were not of individual corruption but of monopolising of certain businesses by its leaders. However, these charges do not seem to have cut much ice with the people of the state, who preferred to go with the developmental agenda offered by the Akalis.