The ruling Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab is headed for a serious showdown with the Congress after the announcement of Mayor, Senior and Deputy Mayor in Amritsar on Monday. The AAP government announced its three candidates for the three positions despite being far too short of majority. In a house of 85 councillors, the ruling AAP had won only 24 seats, against 41 by the Congress.
The Congress had accused the AAP government of intimidating and hoodwinking its councillors to either join the party or support the AAP Mayor candidate. Only on Sunday night, ahead of the scheduled election, a team of the health department raided the residence of one of the councillors on the pretext that he was operating an illegal diary from his residence. Senior Congress leader and former MP reached the councillor’s house alleging it was intimidating tactics by the ruling party.
It is an ironic situation that under similar circumstances in Chandigarh, during the Mayoral election, the Congress and the AAP came together against the BJP. The two parties had accused the BJP of manipulating the election. The matter went to the Supreme Court of India, which ordered fresh elections and the AAP candidate got elected as the Chandigarh Mayor, with Congress support.
In Chandigarh, the AAP and the Congress have an alliance, which started from the 2024 Mayoral elections and continued up to parliamentary elections also. Even now, when the Mayoral election is scheduled once again there, the AAP and the Congress are still aligned together. The Amritsar development is likely to have an impact on Chandigarh also.
Partap Singh Bajwa, Congress Legislative Party leader in the Punjab assembly equated the two situations saying, what the BJP did in Chandigarh, AAP did in Amritsar.
Having fallen massively short of numbers in Amritsar, by winning only 24 wards in a house of 85, the AAP desperately tried to cobble together a majority. It had tried councillors from all the parties including the Akali Dal, the BJP and the Congress. The Congress which had won 41 wards and was short of just four more wards for a majority, managed to keep its flock together. Despite the alleged intimidation by the government, the Congress councillors did not desert the party.
Eventually realising that defections were not possible, on Monday, the AAP announced the election of its three candidates as Mayor, Senior Deputy Mayor and Deputy Mayor, without apparently holding any elections. The elections were claimed to be held by raising of hands, which the Congress alleged was never done. The Congress, which had approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court, alleged that it was contempt of court. The High Court had ordered that the election process must be video-recorded.
It is strange and surprising as to why the AAP needs to use so much power and authority to force its own Mayor in a city where it had actually lost the election. Given the seriousness with which the courts view such matters, as happened in case of Chandigarh Mayor’s election, the AAP may find itself in quite a defensive situation.
There are reports of intimidation in Municipal Council Phagwara also, where the AAP could not win a majority. Rather, it came a distant second after the Congress. The party is also trying it in Phagwara to cobble together a majority by getting councillors defected from other parties, including the Congress. Congress leaders have alleged that the AAP government was misusing the police to intimidate the councillors to support the ruling party.
Except for Patiala, the ruling AAP could not win a clear majority in any of the Municipal Corporations like Ludhiana, Amritsar, Jalandhar and Phagwara. Even in Patiala, there were reports of intimidation right from the beginning of the electoral process with nomination papers of contenders being rejected arbitrarily.
While in Jalandhar and Ludhiana, the AAP was within the striking distance of electing the Mayors, as it was short of only few councillors, in Amritsar and Phagwara the deficit was too high. While it has already installed its Mayor in Amritsar, which in all likelihood will be challenged in the court, it is trying similar ways in Phagwara also.
It is a strange contradiction that the two parties, the AAP and the Congress, which came together in Chandigarh to fight off the BJP, whom they alleged of manipulating the Mayoral elections, are now fighting against each other in not far off Amritsar for similar reasons. The pattern remains the same in both the cities. What the BJP was accused of doing in Chandigarh by the AAP and the Congress together, the AAP is being accused by the Congress of doing the same thing in Amritsar. It appears to be a complete cycle that started in Chandigarh and ended in Amritsar.
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