Ludhiana bypoll: Litmus test for all parties ahead of 2027 state poll
The Ludhiana (West) Assembly bypoll is set to be a litmus test for all political parties in Punjab as its outcome will serve as an indicator to their electoral prospects in the 2027 state Assembly elections.
The bypoll has been necessitated by the demise of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Gurpreet Singh Gogi in January this year.
The result of the June 19 bypoll will be announced on June 23.
Stakes are high for ruling AAP as the bypoll is likely to be considered as a referendum on its performance.
The bypoll for the Hindu-dominated urban constituency is being held in the wake of the government crackdown on farmers, who were evicted from protest sites on the border with neighbouring Haryana earlier this year.
The move was interpreted as an attempt to win the trust of traders, who had to suffer losses due to the closure of roads during the over one year-long farmer protests, held to demand a legal guarantee for Minimum Support Price (MSP) for crops.
The party also kickstarted it campaign in February, months ahead of the announcement of the bypoll schedule, by fielding Rajya Sabha MP Sanjeev Arora.
For the past three months, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and all top leaders of the party, including national convenor Arvind Kejriwal, have increased their public presence in the industrial city, meeting all sections of voters and launching new government initiatives.
Meanwhile, pressure will be on the Congress too, which is currently grappling with differences among its leaders.
The Congress, which is the state’s main Opposition party, has placed its bet on former minister and aggressive campaigner Bharat Bhushan Ashu.
The stakes are also high for state Congress chief Amrinder Singh Raja Warring, who is the sitting Lok Sabha MP from Ludhiana.
Pressure will be intense on Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal to deliver a win, even though this is not a traditional Akali seat.
Subsequent election defeats following the party’s ouster from power in Punjab in the 2017 Assembly elections have pushed the SAD to the margins.
Once a dominant player in the state politics, the SAD had skipped contesting bypolls to four Assembly constituency in the state in November last year.
The party’s tally in the 2022 Assembly poll was reduced to just three and it faced its severest challenge in recent months, when Badal was forced to quit as the party chief.
He was re-elected to the post in the organisational polls held in April.
The SAD has fielded Paropkar Singh Ghumman from the constituency.
The BJP too will look to register a win in the Ludhiana Assembly bypoll after failing to win any of the Lok Sabha seats in the state during the 2024 General Election.
The party, a former coalition partner of the Shiromani Akali Dal, could win only two seats in the 2022 Assembly elections after deciding to go solo following the snapping of decades-long ties with the SAD.
It drew a blank in Punjab during the 2024 General Election and in all seven bypolls (including Sangrur and Jalandhar parliamentary and five Assembly bypolls) held in the past three years.
The BJP is the only major party in the state that has not announced its candidate for the Hindu-dominated Assembly constituency till now.
Punjab