Report by ASHISHPURI
The Jalandhar by-elections battle has witnessed a tough fight between the ruling parties in Punjab and at the Centre. The AAP and BJP have been running an aggressive election campaign in the last three weeks, with AAP running an overly aggressive and micro-managed campaign. The BJP, which was earlier limited to three assembly segments when it had an alliance with SAD, has made its presence felt across all segments with a major push of men and resources from Delhi.
Both AAP and BJP also got people from Delhi and other states for pushing and micro-managing their campaign. Even AAP pushed all its ministers and MLAs to the ground, who worked at the micro level, including party supremo Arvind Kejriwal and CM Bhagwant Singh Mann too. BJP deployed over half a dozen Union ministers, a few MPs, and other central leaders for the campaign.
In this campaign, through publicity material, AAP appeared at the top level followed by BJP, SAD-BSP, and then Congress. However, Congress and SAD-BSP made up that gap with a stronger mode. Former Lok Sabha deputy speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal said he had not left SAD for the sake of his son Inder Iqbal Singh Atwal, who is now a BJP candidate, but for the betterment of Punjab.
On the other hand, BJP centre minister Anurag Thakur said party workers had been meeting people for the last two months, and a large number of party people had participated in the campaign apart from central ministers and MPs. He said their network touched 2.5 lakh families, which includes many villages also. Even BJP also touched the migrant labourers by sending Bhojpuri cinema superstar Azamgarh MP Dinesh Lal Yadav for campaigning.
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For AAP, it's tough because Jalandhar has traditionally remained a Congress seat. The high decibel campaign AAP, in which party convener Arvind Kejriwal and Punjab CM Bhagwant Singh Mann repeatedly sought "ikk Mauka ' (one chance) for just 11 months to see their performance further raised the stakes for AAP at the seat and reflected the desperation.
Even AAP MP Raghav Chadha as well party ministers including finance minister Harpal Singh Cheema, Aman Arora, HARJOT Bains, Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer and chairman Mandi board Harchand Singh barsat, media baron Deepak Bali also campaigned for Sushil Rinku at ground level. The ruling and opposition parties used Sangrur analogy with contrasting messages.
Congress has its strong presence in all the nine assembly segments, still as compared to AAP and BJP. Its election machine appeared less aggressive even as the party leaders managed to put up a united face. But in the other hand still their is a full absence of party high command leaders from Delhi but including former CM Charanjit Singh Channi and Navjot Singh Sidhu together for filing the nomination papers of their candidate Karamjit Kaur Chowdhary. Sidhu also made it clear that the whole party was united in the campaign and he consistently attacked AAP with full swing.
The SAD-BSP alliance appeared to coordinate well as a cohesive election machine. To further galvanize the BSP cadres, SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal on Sunday announced that if his candidate won, then the BSP will get to contest the Banga assembly seat. The voters of Jalandhar will decide on Wednesday, to whom they elect for the betterment of their constituency and which party candidate will win with a huge margin.