Is Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) decreasing vote share in Punjab a good news for the ruling Congress and bad for the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)?

The result of the Shahkot bypoll on Thursday appears to suggest this as AAP’s poor show directly benefited the ruling Congress while the SAD lost the seat despite nearly managing to hold its vote share from 2017 Assembly polls.

In further indication of AAP’s dwindling graph in Punjab politics, the party candidate, Rattan Singh, polled just 1900 votes as compared to 40,911 polled by AAP candidate Amarjit Singh Mehatpur in 2017 polls.

This loss of over 39,000 AAP votes clearly helped the Congress candidate Hardev Singh Ladi in defeating the SAD candidate, Naib Singh Kohar, by a margin of 38,802 votes even as the Akali Dal candidate polled just 2,913 votes less than 2017 polls.

Despite being the main Opposition party ahead of SAD in the Punjab Assembly, AAP’s poor performance in the state can be attributed to lack of a united leadership.

Ever since the Assembly polls, the party failed to convert its votes during the civic polls and  AAP candidate lost his deposit in election for Gurdaspur Lok Sabha. Several party leaders including in Shahkot have left AAP in order to join SAD or the Congress as party appears directionless and faction ridden.

To make it worse, AAP’s national leadership too has failed to resolve the differences between senior leaders in the state and lift the morale of the workers.

Blaming en-mass shift in AAP vote to the Congress  for its defeat in Shahkot, SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal said the Akali Dal retained the party vote share in the Shahkot by-election to emerge as the principal opposition

party.

He said in direct contrast, AAP faced a total collapse in the by-election with the party barely polling 1.5 per cent of the vote share by polling 1,900 votes, only slightly more than the vote share under NOTA as well as that polled by SAD(Amritsar).

“The state of AAP can be measured from the fact that it did not even open its account in many villages. It has ceased to exist as a political entity in Punjab”, he added.

The Chief Minister (CM) Amarinder Singh said the AAP has completely lost the script and was no longer relevant in the country’s political arena.

The CM advised AAP to pack its bags and leave Punjab instead of continuing to shame itself with such shocking electoral defeats.

Shahkot bypoll was necessitated because of the death Akali Dal legislator, Ajit Singh Kohar on February 4. The SAD had fielded his son from the seat which was won by the party five times in a row.