The final battle lines have been drawn for the Ludhiana West by-election. Ruling Aam Aadmi Party, the principal opposition party Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Shiromani Akali Dal have fielded their candidates, possibly their best bets. However, the main contest appears to be between the AAP and the Congress, with Congress having an edge as of now.
Going by the 2024 General Election results, the BJP should be on the strongest footing ahead of everyone else by leaps and bounds. But the party, for various reasons, was slow in announcing its candidate and also starting the campaign. The party announced Jiwan Gupta, one of the state vice presidents, as its candidate only after the elections were declared and when other parties had completed multiple rounds of campaigning.
Except for the common perception that the by-elections are normally won by the ruling parties, there is nothing that is going in favour of the ruling AAP. The party has fielded industrialist-turned-politician and sitting Rajya Sabha MP Sanjeev Arora from here. Arora is understood to have initially declined to contest. But was reportedly convinced with the promise of a ministerial berth, some even claimed deputy chief ministership. This was apparently being done to create a Rajya Sabha vacancy for party supremo Arvind Kejriwal after he lost in Delhi elections.
Arora’s other major handicap is that he has no electoral experience. He has never contested any political election. Rather, he joined politics just three years ago when he turned out to be an AAP “surprise pick” for Rajya Sabha. No matter how much support you get from outside, fighting elections is a specialised job, which no one else can do for you, even when the entire government machinery may be at your beck and call and working for you 24x7.
Although he enjoys a good personal reputation, it may not be enough to beat the strong anti-incumbency prevailing across the state against the government. His personal inexperience, coupled with disillusionment with the AAP in its fourth year, are making things really difficult for him.
Congress candidate Ashu has been active in the area for about 30 years, since he became the area councillor for the first time in 1997. He, his wife and his brother have represented different wards falling in the Ludhiana West assembly segment. Besides, he has been contesting the assembly election since 2012, winning twice. He lost in 2022 in the statewide AAP tsunami. Even then, his margin of defeat was not much.
Ashu was booked by the Punjab vigilance bureau and remained in jail for several months. Later, he was also arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in the same matter. The FIR was, however, later quashed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court, thus vindicating his position that he had falsely been implicated.
Unlike the AAP, the Congress has a strong network of grassroots-level workers and a well-established party infrastructure. The AAP could not build up a proper party base, which is hurting it now. Although AAP workers and leaders from across the state are working in Ludhiana West, they do not have the same advantage a local leader/ worker normally would have.
The BJP, which has a strong footing in the constituency, given its demography with about 70 percent upper caste Hindu votes, could have been in a formidable position had it not dilly-dallied in announcing the candidate. Moreover, BJP candidate Jiwan Gupta, like AAP candidate Arora, is fighting his maiden election. Besides, a perception has been created that the BJP delayed the announcement and fielded a relatively weak candidate to ensure that the opposition vote does not get divided much so that AAP does not stand any chance to win.
Senior BJP leader and Delhi minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa said it publicly in a press conference and that too at the Punjab BJP headquarters, urging people to vote for “anybody” to ensure the defeat of the AAP. That was taken as a subtle signal to the party supporters that their preference at the time of voting should be to ensure the defeat of the AAP candidate and they must vote for the candidate who can defeat him irrespective of the party s/he belongs to.
That is a strategic error on part of the BJP to sacrifice its own bright chances just to ensure the defeat of the AAP, which may not necessarily happen. Only the BJP had improved upon its 2022 performance in the 2024 General Elections, while both the AAP and the Congress had gone down. While the AAP polled about over 40,000 votes in 2022, it came down to about 22,000 in 2024 and the Congress came down marginally from 32,000 to 30,000. The BJP improved from 28,000 to over 45,000 in the 2024 General Elections.
The Shiromani Akali Dal has fielded Parupkar Singh Ghuman, a prominent city lawyer and a former president of the District Bar Association, Ludhiana. He happens to be the only Jatt Sikh candidate in the fray. There are an estimated 40,000 Jatt Sikh voters in Ludhiana West. But they do not vote en bloc for a single party.
Owing to the strong anti-incumbency against the ruling AAP and the BJP’s weak and wobbly strategy, the Congress, as of now, has a definite edge in the Ludhiana West constituency over its rivals, despite the reports of factionalism. With nine more days left for the campaigning, and bigwigs from all the parties descending on the industrial and financial capital of Punjab, the final battle is going to be the toughest one for every candidate and the party.
The AAP, so far, has not raised its stakes, apparently due to uncertainty about the final outcome. The Congress has been trying to make it a referendum against the government. The outcome of the election will have a definite impact on the state’s politics, as it will set the tone for the 2027 assembly elections. Whoever wins the Ludhiana West by-election will walk with extra confidence towards 2027 and vice versa.
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