When the BJP leaders are heard asserting that the party will fight on its own in Punjab, there is a reason behind it. The BJP is banking on a five-cornered contest in Punjab this time. It will be for the first time that the state will have a multi-cornered contest. The BJP is targeting around 30 seats on its own.
Traditionally, Punjab had witnessed bipolar contest for a long time between the Akali-BJP alliance and the Congress. However, from 2017 it changed with the Aam Aadmi Party making the contest triangular. The AAP despite being a new party in 2017, won 20 assembly seats and pushed the Akali-BJP alliance to the third spot, claiming the role of the principal opposition party.
In the 2022 assembly elections, after the Akalis broke away with the BJP due to the differences over the Central agricultural laws, the two parties fought separately. However, both of them were quite marginalised and the contest mainly turned bipolar between the ruling Congress and the AAP. The AAP won a landslide victory winning 92 seats, the Congress a distant second with 18 seats. The BJP won two and the Akalis won three seats.
However, the situation has seen massive change since then. There is considerable anti-incumbency against the AAP government. Punjab traditionally and mostly votes the ruling party out. It was only in 2012 that the Akali-BJP alliance got re-elected.
While the Congress does have a better chance with presence and representation in all the regions, castes and communities, its internal strife may cost it dearly. The party had won seven of 13 parliamentary constituencies in the 2024 General Elections and led from 39 assembly segments.
The BJP did not win any of the 13 parliamentary constituencies from Punjab in 2024. It was for the first time that the party drew a blank in the state in the parliamentary elections. It was contesting the parliamentary elections on its own after a long time. But the BJP did manage to get a significant 18.5 percent vote share. The party led from 23 assembly segments.
Also read: Sidelining moderate Akalis will do no good to Punjab
It is this much percentage of vote share that has buoyed the confidence of the party that it is serious on contesting of its own. By now it appears to be clear that the party will contest on its own depending on a good support base in the urban areas. Although there is a huge difference between the parliamentary and state elections, yet the party seems confident of repeating the parliamentary feat in terms of vote share. However, during those elections there were two important factors that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the construction of the Ram Temple. Both the issues will be absent in the assembly elections.
The assembly elections are likely to witness five-cornered contest in most of the seats between the AAP, the Congress, the BJP, the Akali Dal led by Sukhbir Singh Badal and the radical rebel group Waris Punjab De headed by jailed MP Amritpal. In some constituencies it might turn to be a six cornered contest as the Shiromani Akali Dal-Amritsar headed by Simranjit Singh Mann and the Bahujan Samaj Party do have their respective pockets of influence and can impact the overall result in these constituencies.
The BJP’s primary forte remains the urban constituencies, where it will mostly be the triangular contest between the BJP, the Congress and the AAP. However, the party will expect and also try to ensure that the Akali candidates also remain in the fight even if they bag a few thousand votes only.
Under such circumstances, the BJP will have to increase its vote share by a few percent only to come near or at par with the AAP and the Congress, both of which got around 26 percent vote share in parliamentary elections. Here the nerves, energy, resources and electoral skills of all the three main parties will get tested.
If the BJP manages to get somewhere between 25 to 30 seats, there will in all likelihood be a hung house with no party having clear majority on its own. It will depend at that time as what permutations and combinations emerge. The BJP will obviously remain open to post-poll alliance with the Akalis and possibly with the radical Waris Punjab De as well.
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