BATHINDA: The farmers who humbled the Central government in one year were blown out in three months of elections.
Their political front, the Sanyukt Samaj
Morcha
(
SSM
), drew a blank in its first Punjab polls.
Morcha’s chief ministerial face Balbir
Singh Rajewal
, who led a year-long agitation on the borders of Delhi, finished a humiliating sixth and failed to save his security deposit as he polled only 3.5% of votes in Ludhiana district’s Samrala assembly segment.
Rajewal polled 4,676 votes out of a total of 1,33,524 votes polled in the predominantly rural seat, polling just 3.5% of the total votes. AAP’s Jagtar Singh Diyalpura secured 57,557 votes in Samrala and defeated his nearest rival Paramjit Singh Dhillon of SAD by 30,890 votes. Other candidates who polled more votes than Rajewal include Rupinder
Singh Raja Gill
of Congress (23,368), Varinder Singh Sekhon of SAD-Amritsar (8,328) and outgoing Congress MLA Amrik Singh Dhillon, who fought as an independent after being denied ticket by party, polled 7,693 votes.
Since the SSM couldn’t register as a party in time, it had to field all its 92 candidates as independents, with the support of 10 from farmer unionist Gurnam Singh Charuni’s Sanyukt Sangharsh Party (SSP). After the laws were repealed, 20 farmer unions Punjab had combined to form a party on December 25, 2021. Some broke away from SSM and distanced from its dabbling into politics.
BKU variants Ekta Ugrahan, Ekta Dakaunda, Ekta Sidhupur, Lakhowal, Kadian, and Krantikari, besides Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee and Krantikari Kisan Union, had even declined to join the morcha. Not bogged down by the initial setbacks, the morcha remained in the contest and allied with Haryana-based Charuni’s SSP, which took a share of 10 candidatures, while the Left (Communist Party of India and CPI (Marxist Leninist) Liberation) separated from the SSM to field own candidates on own symbols.
The morcha had started disintegrating even before the results. A few hours before the counting of votes, Rajewal’s deputies in Faridkot and Muktsar resigned, alleging that entering electoral politics had weakened the farmers’ cause. Two more district units had abstained from campaigning. Out of SSM’s other constituents, rebellion forced Gurnam Singh Bhikhi of the Punjab Kisan Union to retire from the Mansa contest.
Two more candidates withdrew. One supported AAP in Rampura Phul, while the other went to Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) of Simranjit Singh Mann in Amargarh. The SSM failed to get the symbol of tractor and blamed the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) of blocking relaxations.
The farmer groups outside the SSM claimed the electoral plunge to be a miscalculation that could erode the struggle’s gains.
They wanted the famers to remain a pressure group to get their way with the political parties. BKU (Ekta Ugrahan) president Joginder Singh Ugrahan said: “Nothing can be achieved through politics but a lot through protest.” The man whose union has presence in 1,600-odd village said as soon as the 22 unions had decided to contest the polls, they had stopped being part of the Sanyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), umbrella body of farmers’ unions that had led the struggle against the central laws.
Asked about the party’s dismal performance,
Rajewal
, said: “We wanted to save Punjab from falling into a further mess.”
(With inputs from Shariq Majeed in Ludhiana)
Neel Kamal writes about sustainable agriculture, environment, cli...
Read MoreNeel Kamal writes about sustainable agriculture, environment, climate change for The Times of India. His incisive and comprehensive reporting about over a year-long farmers' struggle against farm laws at the borders of the national capital won laurels. He is an alumunus of Chandigarh College of Engineering and Technology.
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