The urban areas of Amritsar are no more the forté of Bharatiya Janata Party. Analysing the factors leading to the party’s defeat in the holy city, a seven-member review committee has reported that the BJP — once preferred by the urbanites, businessmen and traders — lost ground in the city during the recently-concluded parliamentary polls.
Besides, the deteriorating law and order situation and the growing drug menace in the State were also zeroed in as the reasons behind party’s defeat in Amritsar.
The saffron party has won two out of the three seats it contested during 2014 General Elections. While the party scored emphatic win in Gurdaspur and Hoshiarpur — the seats it lost during previous 2009 lok Sabha polls, and faced a resounding defeat in Amritsar —where it had sitting MP.
The BJP managed to improve its tally by one seat as compared to the 2009 polls coupled with increase in its vote share by almost one per cent, but the party’s stalwart Arun Jaitley’s defeat in Amritsar has proved to be a major embarrassment.
The Committee, headed by senior party leader Balramji Das Tandon, has been meeting to discuss and evaluate the reasons for combine’s defeat in seven of the 13 parliamentary seats in general,
and Jaitley’s defeat in Amritsar in particular.
After discussing and analyzing combine’s performance in all the constituencies, the Committee’s Wednesday meeting was mainly concentrated on Amritsar.
“We believed that resentment among people in Amritsar was so much against the ruling Government that neither the Modi wave nor stature of a leader like Arun Jaitley could work for the party,” a Committee member told The Pioneer, requesting anonymity.
The BJP leader said that the State Government’s move of imposing taxes, including the property tax and e-trip system, has made a huge dent on the combine’s prospects. “The issue of drugs, coupled with allegations on Bikram Singh Majithia, has also proved costly to the party. Though the drug problem was not much in urban, but the way media highlighted it made the urban residents believed that it’s the SAD behind it,” added the leader.
The Committee also believed that the issues like city’s development, unfinished projects, city’s cleaning and sanitation, among others raised by former MP Navjot Singh Sidhu has also worked against the party, especially in the urban pockets that profoundly voted for the Congress.
The party has already underlined the fact that the electors in Punjab left the national issues, and prefer to vote by keeping in mind the issues
related to the State, and their particular area.
Amritsar lok Sabha constituency comprise nine assembly segments, out of which six are represented by the SAD-BJP combine — Ajnala, Majitha, Amritsar North, Amritsar East, Amritsar South, and Attari, and remaining three — Amritsar West, Raja Sansi, and Amritsar Central — have Congress MlAs.
SAD-BJP combine could managed to secure a lead in just two segments — Raja Sansi and Majitha — both rural constituencies.
In all urban constituencies, where the BJP has its MlAs who were elected just two years back, the Congress swept with a margin no less than 20,000 votes.
Jaitley lost by 18,726 from Amritsar North assembly constituency, represented by BJP Cabinet Minister, who was also given the responsibility of handling the party’s campaign in urban pockets.