Punjab | Unforced errors open up the game

Four full seasons left to go for its assembly election in 2027, Punjab is already a potboiler full of climactic foreboding. A striking picture on January 15 expressed it perfectly, as chief minister Bhagwant Mann was summoned to the Akal Takht. Usually the effervescent sort, his barefoot walk to the sacred seat, head bowed and humble of aspect, said all that needed to be said.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has time to repent at leisure—and perchance repair. Panthic politics is new turf for it, so it waded, eyes wide open, right into a minefield, each misstep successfully triggering a new detonation. The latest: Mann’s claim that the Punjab Police had traced 169 of 328 missing Guru Granth Sahib saroops at Rasokhana Shri Nabh Kanwal Raja Sahib in Banga. Instead of pleasing the devout, it outraged them, forcing this awkward retreat. Worse, it was an attempt at expiation for an earlier infraction: days ago, Atishi Marlena’s alleged sacrilegious remarks in the Delhi assembly had handed its rivals the perfect weapon to accuse AAP of insensitivity towards the faith. An unforced error that cost game and set.

And match? Wide open, perhaps wider than thought before. So much so that a gloomy laggard, Sukhbir Badal’s Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), now has a window to climb back into the script. Via the scripture, the very area on which perceived weakness had brought it doom in the first place.

PANTHIC VACUUM

The Sikh body politic is the nucleus of Punjab politics—in fact, its controlling stakeholder. But its central alcove had been empty after the SAD was forced to evacuate it in a spectacular fall from grace circa 2017. Ever since, there’s been a scramble to fill the vacuum. The radicals, rival Akalis, AAP, the Congress, even the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have made overt and subtle plays for it. But it’s risky play, as AAP is discovering.

Panthic issues are a lightning rod for the rural Jat Sikhs who once constituted the core Akali vote bank. Governance failures formed the subsoil of their all-round disaffection with Sukhbir, but it was articulated as panthic anger on the 2015 sacrilege and subsequent police firing at Behbal Kalan: a strong legitimising pretext for a shift towards ‘secular’ options.

Absent resolution on those issues, and the disaffection has been getting transferred to AAP, with its own promise of governance miracles running into a reality check. Meanwhile, the panthic space came to be increasingly captured by the radicals, with even Khalistan sloganeering again turning kosher. The incarceration of Khadoor Sahib MP Amritpal Singh has capped that arc of volatility—sheathing the tip of the spear, gradually deflating the groundswell. The second line of hopefuls, a rival Akali ‘Reform’ faction led by former Akal Takht jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh, too, is losing steam. A key protagonist—Charanjit Brar, once a Sukhbir aide—joined the BJP recently.

BADAL MAY RAIN AGAIN

But the space is swinging back to the parent SAD. For years dismissed as a spent force, it finds a chance to invoke its historic role as the defender of Sikh pride. Concrete proof of what this reversion means came in the recent local body polls: the SAD gained in the Malwa region, seizing control of the Bathinda and Muktsar zila parishads, besides several panchayat samitis. A modest local revival, yet reinforcing the party’s hold over traditional strongholds and hinting at a potential springboard for 2027.

Seeing these green shoots, Sukhbir is planning a campaign of rallies across all 117 assembly constituencies, a show of visibility as well as a statement of intent. The plan, finalised in a meeting of district presidents and booth in-charges, is to reconnect with the base that once powered Akali dominance.

The SAD also received a timely boost following the release of senior leader Bikramjit Majithia on bail on February 3. Majithia wasted no time in returning to the political battlefield, launching direct attacks on Mann, projecting himself as a victim of political vendetta.

Why did Mann’s Banga overture backfire? Factual infirmities (the copies were not part of the missing saroops), police entry into the gurudwara, and the language he used (“unauthorised” copies). Inept repair work by finance minister Harpal Cheema didn’t help. On January 21, he visited the shrine to calm the waters, said “no discrepancy was found” (contradicting Mann), then backtracking. With the Atishi episode still burning like crop residue, smoke fills the screen for AAP. Sukhbir, by now wiser from experience, is well placed to harvest the upcoming rabi crop.