The AAP Movement Finds Itself at a Crossroads in Punjab

Arvind Kejriwal, the national convener of the Aam Aadmi Party(AAP) speaking to AAP Member of Parliament Bhagwant Mann. The party is planning to contest the assembly elections in Punjab in 2017. K.Asif/India Today Group/Getty Images
26 March, 2015

During the general elections that were held in May last year, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), keen to make its foray into national politics, contested 432 out of the 543 Lok Sabha seats across the country. The party’s candidates lost their security deposits in 414 seats, and managed to win only four, all of which were in Punjab. The AAP was lampooned in mainstream discourse, and Arvind Kejriwal—the face of the party—was mocked at every available opportunity. However, less than a year later, the AAP rose like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes in the Delhi assembly elections and formed a government in the state with an absolute majority.

While the party’s struggles with its internal issues have dominated all conversations around it in recent times, the larger question still remains. What is next and where is the AAP headed after this steep climb? An indication of the party’s next move was first provided by AAP leader and Supreme Court advocate, HS Phoolka, on 10 February 2015, the day on which the Delhi election results were announced: “Dilli hamari hai, ab Punjab ki bari hai.”

After the decisive mandate that the AAP received in the Delhi elections, the party's natural electoral progression would have been to contest the Bihar assembly elections, which are due later this year. However, the party leadership took stock of the situation and decided otherwise. In Bihar, the AAP lacks both the party structure as well as the time required to strengthen its cadre, vis-a-vis Punjab—which is scheduled to have elections in 2017 and is the only state where the party has a reasonable support base, particularly since all of its four Lok Sabha members of Parliament are in that region. “People forgive you only once and we learnt our lesson in the Lok Sabha polls. So we don’t want to take any more chances,” a Delhi-based AAP leader told me.

For its part, the Punjab unit of the AAP—comprising Sucha Singh Chhotepur, the AAP state convener; Senior Advocate HS Phoolka; Advocate Himmat Singh Shergill; Bhai Baldeep; and Jassi Jasraj with the party’s MPs in Punjab, Dr Dharmveer Gandhi, Sh. Bhagwant Mann, Professor Sandhu Singh and Sh. Harinder Singh Khalsa—travelled to Delhi to campaign in the run-up to the polls in December, bringing along supporters from the state. The leadership of Punjab was aware that the AAP’s fate in the assembly polls of 2017 was entwined with the party’s performance in the capital. Following its victory in Delhi, the AAP has now asked its MPs from Punjab to capitalise on its success in Delhi and start mobilising voters in the state.

Admittedly, with four Lok Sabha MPs, a swell in nearly 33 of the 117 assembly constituencies and nearly 24 percent of the vote share in the Lok Sabha polls, AAP could position itself as a formidable alternative to the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance in Punjab. Its massive show of strength at the Hola–Mohalla conference—a historic politico-relgious meet—at Sri Anandpur Sahib in March, where it managed to outmatch the attendance at the SADconference was an indication of the party’s increasing prominence in the political theatre of Punjab.

While The sentiment within the party appears to be positive, the moot question remains. Will the AAP be able to perform outside its home turf, and if so, what will its modus operandi for achieving this goal be? Chhotepur elucidated the party’s strategy for me, “See a lot of work has to be done and many a mile has to be covered, but we are buoyant. Our style of operation in Punjab would be very similar to the way we managed our Delhi campaign. Multiple rallies would be addressed in every constituency, by the central leadership. We would minutely supervise the execution of every election plan including the selection of candidates. We also intend to run several surveys, to ascertain the popularity of our candidates.”

But, if AAP intends to capitalise on these leads, then it must set its own house in order. In Punjab, the party may not be facing the leadership crisis that it is in Delhi, but that is largely due to the fact that there exists a leadership vacuum in the state. None of the members of the state leadership are renowned public figures and there is no clarity on who the AAP’s face in Punjab will be. This absence is particularly distinct in comparison to the Akali Dal, which has PS Badal, a five-time chief minister, the Congress, which will probably field the former chief minister of Punjab, and the deputy leader of the party in the Lok Sabha, Captain Amarinder Singh and the People’s Party of Punjab (PPP), which has Manpreet Badal, a former finance minister of the state.

AAP’s predicament in the state is visible in its performance in the by-elections in Patiala City and Talwandi Sabo, which were held in August last year. Both the party’s candidates—Harjeet Singh Adaltiwala and Baljinder Kaur—lost their deposits.

Furthermore, the views of the fragmented state leadership have proven to be cacophonous. Infighting within the ranks is frequent and consonance amongst the mandarins of the AAP in Punjab is rare, particularly when a major decision is to be taken. This incongruity was on public display when Sukhpal Khaira—a prominent Congress leader—reportedly expressed an interest in joining the AAP through a Facebook note posted on 27 February, in which he invited public opinion on his possible inclusion into the party. Although the post has been taken down since, its underlying message did not go unnoticed. While Chhotepur was in favour of his induction, Bhagwant Mann, Dharam Vir Gandhi and Professor Sadhu Singh—AAP’s MP’s from Sangrur, Patiala and Faridkot, respectively—reportedly opposed this proposition. Although the idea of this induction was eventually abandoned, conflicting jousting of this nature bodes ill for future electoral matches for the party and damages the AAP’s public image in Punjab.

Such instances are particularly harmful given that the apparent rift within the party in Delhi has had a cascading effect on the state’s electorate, amidst the growing sentiment that Arvind Kejriwal may be exposing a previously unseen dictatorial streak with little room for tolerance. The AAP’s internal organizational strife points towards the prevalence of a rigidly hierarchical system that is in variance with the image that it has cultivated of being the “party of the common man.”

The party could have made an attempt to maintain its share of voice among the state’s electorate by participating in the municipal elections which were held in February, but it decided not to do so. Chhotepur blamed the inconvenient timing for this decision, given that nomination process was initiated on 7 February, coinciding with the day on which Delhi voted for the assembly elections. The reasons for its nonparticipation notwithstanding, AAP definitely lost an opportunity through which it could have gauged the voter sentiment in Punjab and possibly leveraged the buoyancy of the Delhi election verdict.

If corrective and remedial measures are to be taken, they would have to be ushered in time. The electorate in Punjab is typical in the sense that its voting patterns for the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha have always been inconsistent. For instance, in the Vidhan Sabha poll of 2007, the SAD-BJP alliance emerged victorious, whereas the Lok Sabha election of 2009 saw 8 seats out of a total of 13 in the state being conceded to the Congress. If one were to go further back in history, it would also be useful to take note of the Lok Sabha elections in 1989 in which the Simranjit Mann-led Akali Dal [A] and his group of radicals garnered 6 seats. This was a period in Punjab that was marked by militancy compounded by police atrocities against extremists and their sympathisers. It was in this religiously charged atmosphere augmented by the demand for a separate state for Sikhs that Simranjit Mann and his group won by riding high on religious sentiments. Following this however, the party’s MPs refused to take an oath through the next five years, as a protest against the kirpan—the Sikh dagger worn as one of the five distinguishing signs of the Sikh Khalsa—not being allowed within the Parliament. In 1992, all Akali factions boycotted the elections, after which Mann could not re-establish his party’s presence in the state despite a victory from Sangrur in the parliamentary elections of 1999.

The AAP should perhaps take a cue from this telling timeline. Coagulation of its vote-bank is of utmost importance, and the fact that the party seems to be unmindful of exactly whom its core vote-bank in Punjab comprises is a worrying sign.

In Delhi, AAP’s victory can be attributed to the support it received from slum communities, labour colonies and fringe areas of the city. BJP’s percentage share did not suffer as it was successful in amassing the city vote Following from this example, it is imperative for the AAP to determine whom it wants to target in Punjab and where. A sound strategy to win the elections in Punjab would be to leverage  the anti-incumbency of the ruling regime and infighting within state Congress leaders. In order to emerge as a contender against traditional parties in the state, the AAP will need to ensure that it has a robust party structure in place. Preliminary enquiries about the district level hierarchy and work force in the state would reveal that the organisational structure of the AAP is fledgling while its grass roots level party workers are nearly non-existent. The assembly elections of 2012 in Punjab were so intense that the ruling dispensation had set aside volunteers for individual families. Without the requisite bench strength of office-bearers and a critical mass of party workers, the AAP’s electoral prospects look bleak. After all, it will be nearly impossible for the party to manage the booths, if there doesn’t exist a dedicated cadre. The fact that the electorate in Punjab is still unaware of AAP’s vision document for the state and the lack of a Punjab-centric manifesto from the party has not helped either.

To begin with, the ample subsidies that AAP promised in Delhi may not be an incentive in Punjab, since the Akali Dal has already provided several subsides in the form of free water, wheat, pulses, power and tax breaks.

Second, there’s the drug menace plaguing the state. The centre blames the Akalis for this issue, while Akalis blame the Border Security Force (BSF), claiming that there is a high influx of narcotics from across the border. Atlhough the AAP took this issue up during the Lok Sabha elections, its leaders have largely been silent on it save for a few token statements. Third, Punjab is an agrarian state in which 13 lakh families are dependent on the state. Undoubtedly, the new land acquisition bill will be a bane for these farmers. Given that the Akali Dal has already expressed its support for the bill while the Congress has not taken any definitive stance on it within the state, the AAP could have taken up the mandate of standing up to the land bill on their behalf and initiating a farmer’s movement to express its commitment to the cause. However, people in Punjab are still to hear from the AAP leadership on this issue.

Fourth, a burning issue Punjab has also been the centre’s U-turn on its stand on the recommendations made to fix minimum support prices for crops other than paddy and wheat as part of the Swaminathan Report. The BJP promised to implement the recommendations in it manifesto, but has now submitted an affidavit to the Supreme Court stating its inability to do so. This issue, if picked up by the AAP, would catapult it into the limelight in Punjab. But so far, the AAP has not bothered to come on public fora for its stand on these farmers’ issues.

Furthermore, there has been no word from the AAP on the cartelisation of sand and gravel mining, the prevalence of which affected the prospects of the ruling dispensation in the last Lok Sabha polls.

Finally, the AAP has also been missing from most religious conferences, such as the Jor Mela in Fatehgarh Sahib and the Maghi Mela in Muktsar. Though these conferences are symbolic in nature, they are a nerve centre of Punjab’s politics and have provided a crucial forum in the state for all political parties to spell out their vision for Punjab.

The AAP ushered in a new dynamism to politics by linking itself to the aspirations of the common man. A critical vote bank for the party would thus be the youth and educated urban and rural middle class. The end of VIP culture, corruption, and voluntary un-employment are issues which are deeply intertwined with and unique to this segment of Punjab. A higher per capital income base compared to other agrarian states and an overall robust agriculture sector have made Punjabi youth aspire for a higher standard of living. On the other hand, worthwhile job opportunities are shrinking in the state due to progressive de-industrialisation and emigration of businesses. The AAP would do well to expound on how it could catalyse employment and usher in better opportunities for the state.

The AAP's future in the state is going to depend on how the party runs its show in Delhi and the repercussions it will have in Punjab. Any split in the opposition votes would go in favour of the ruling party, and the last thing the AAP may want to do is what the PPP did last time: help the SAD-BJP stay in power.


Charandeep Singh is a journalist based in Chandigarh and a political observer.