For the ruling Aam Aadmi Party there is not much to celebrate over the recent municipal elections in Punjab held on Saturday. Except for Patiala, AAP has struggled everywhere.
Even in Patiala the results have been clouded by the way the elections were conducted, as the opposition party candidates were brutally intimidated.
If the AAP got a slight cumulative edge over the opposition parties, it was mainly because the elections turned out to be ‘AAP-centric’ as it was the AAP versus the rest and the opposition vote got divided.
While the AAP has lost Amritsar, in Ludhiana and Jalandhar, it has failed to win the absolute majority. In the house of 95 in Ludhiana, it was stuck at 41, short of 7 councilors, while in Jalandhar also it could win only 38 out of 85, again short of absolute majority to choose the mayor comfortably.
While in Ludhiana it has seven MLAs who are ex-officio members of the corporation may eventually help it to get the mayoral position, in Jalandhar, it has only two MLAs, who will be ex-officio members of the corporation. It will still fall short of the majority.
In Ludhiana the prospect of the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party coming together, with 30 and 19 councilors respectively, is not being ruled out to keep the AAP away.
This may sound highly unlikely given the Congress-BJP rivalry at the state and the national level, but it cannot be ruled out at the municipal corporation level. The BJP and the Congress did come together in 1992, when the Congress supported Chaudhary Sat Prakash of the BJP for the position of the mayor.
It is quite likely that the AAP may manage to get its mayors elected in both the places; Ludhiana as well as Jalandhar. That will just be a mere consolation and face saving for the government.
Otherwise, the AAP has lost the firm ground it had gained in 2022 assembly elections. While it fared badly in the parliamentary elections, its performance in the municipal elections has not been any better once the outright and unabashed support of the local police and administration is factored in, for the ruling party in such elections. This, though, is not exclusive to the AAP as all governments, whether of the Congress or the Akali-BJP have done the same things in the past.
The biggest setback for the AAP has been the loss in Sangrur, where it lost badly, winning just seven of the 29 seats in the council. Sangrur was always considered to be the AAP bastion and happens to be the home district of the Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann. When the party was almost wiped out of Punjab in the 2019 General Elections, Sangrur was the only parliamentary constituency it had won.
Congress does better
On the other hand, the Congress has managed to stabilise its position in the state and retain the ground it occupied in the parliamentary elections after a severe drubbing in the 2022 assembly elections.
It has won the Amritsar Municipal Corporation and the Phagwara Municipal Council. Its performance in Ludhiana and Jalandhar has not been quite bad either. With such a hostile local and police administration and a resurgent BJP in competition, it has still managed to win a respectable number of seats in Jalandhar and Ludhiana, besides winning maximum seats in Amritsar and Phagwara.
It can hope and expect to build upon its performance further. The results have generated tremendous optimism across the party’s rank and file, which will further boost their morale.
BJP retains urban base
The BJP may not have performed quite impressively, but its performance still remains better as compared to previous municipal elections. It was contesting the municipal elections on its own, without an alliance with the Akalis for the first time.
Despite that it has managed to retain a good number of seats both in Jalandhar and Ludhiana, winning 19 seats each in the two cities. Besides, the BJP leadership was less visible as compared to the AAP and the Congress.
For the already beleaguered Shiromani Akali Dal, the stakes in the urban areas were not really high. Not much was expected of the party in these elections.
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