Chandigarh, December 23
As the full and final results and details have come in the public domain about the final figures of votes polled by various political parties, these have created ripples within the ruling Aam Aadmi Party. The final figures suggest that in about 70 percent seats, the ruling party’s victory margin was mere ten votes or less.
The revelations come in the backdrop of allegations by the opposition parties including the Congress and the Shiromani Akali Dal which are precisely saying the same thing that at several places where the margin of victory of the opposition parties was of just few votes, the ruling party managed to get its candidates declared as victorious even when the candidate had actually lost.
The AAP knows it well how to control the narrative that too when it is in power and has complete control over the way news is circulated and distributed and how it reaches to the ultimate reader/viewer. The party has managed to create a perception that it remains invincible in Punjab so far, by winning most of the by-elections and the rural and urban local bodies elections.
The detailed analysis of the results of the local bodies elections, which are conducted by the State Election Commission, suggest that the ruling party instead of celebrating in glory has all the reasons to be concerned about its eroding support base.
The real reflection of the ruling party’s popularity became manifest in the 2024 General Elections, when it lost ten of the thirteen parliamentary seats in Punjab. While the party claimed that it had improved upon its 2019 tally of having won just single seat of Sangrur then, the actual results were not very comfortable.
Against 92 seats the party had won in the 2022 assembly elections, it led only from 33 assembly segments in the 2024 General Elections, a loss of 59 seats. The party’s performance or the prospects do not seem to have improved in any way since then.
The Zila Parishad and Block Samiti election results are actually no good news for the party. Even in the urban local bodies, although the AAP managed to “win” all of them, its performance was at best “mixed”. It did not score any decisive victory in any of the municipal corporations of Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Amritsar. It had to make people defect from other parties to elect its mayors.
The party still has 13 months left ahead of the 2027 assembly elections. The party knows how to contest the elections. This time, however, it will not have the element of “newness” that it can “seek a chance” to be tried as it did in 2022. It has now already been tried. Rather, it will have to face the anti-incumbency as well. Barring once, Punjab has mostly voted out the ruling parties and coalitions. The AAP will need to do a lot more than managing the publicity campaigns if it really wants to realize the dream of returning to power once more in Punjab in 2027.
