Should Kejriwal have opted out of Jalandhar by-poll contest for the cause of opposition unity?

New Delhi: Leader of the Opposition in Punjab Partap Singh Bajwa had asked Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supremo Arvind Kejriwal to leave the Jalandhar Lok Sabha seat for the Congress and take the lead in consolidating the opposition against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections.

Bajwa’s offer could have served a dual purpose for Kejriwal. Firstly, he would have taken a moral high ground by supporting former Member of Parliament and prominent Dalit leader Santokh Singh Chaudhary’s wife Karamjit Kaur Chaudhary and saved his party of any embarrassment in the event of a defeat.

Secondly, it was an opportunity for Kejriwal to project himself as one of the tallest leaders willing to leave a seat for a rival party in the larger interest of the opposition unity.

The Congress appears to be on a strong wicket in its traditional stronghold of Jalandhar with Karamjit Kaur Chaudhary riding on a sympathy wave after her husband died of a heart attack while participating in Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra in Punjab on January 14 this year.

The AAP could not find a suitable candidate from its stable and had to rely on an import from Congress only. It named former Congress legislator Sushil Kumar Rinku, who joined the ruling party on Wednesday, as its candidate.

The by-poll in the reserved seat is crucial for both the ruling AAP and Congress. A win by the AAP will restore its popularity which had taken a hit with the defeat in chief minister Bhagwant Singh Mann’s Lok Sabha constituency Sangrur in the by-polls in June last year, three months after the party swept the assembly elections winning 92 of the total 117 seats.

Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) chief Simranjit Singh Mann defeated AAP’s Gurmail Singh by 5,822 votes while the Congress, BJP and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) candidates lost their security deposits.

The AAP had visibly negated the gains in three months, mainly due to administrative issues. The ruling party then seemed to have no grip over bureaucracy and frequent transfer of officials indicated some sort of tussle within the establishment.

The Jalandhar by-poll is being held over a year after the assembly elections and much is at stake for the AAP. A defeat would further erode its credibility and put the ruling party in the dock ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

By accepting Bajwa’s offer, Kejriwal would have silenced his detractors within the opposition camp and put Congress in a spot. At the same time, it wouldn’t have been something unusual in politics.

Last year in October, the BJP decided to withdraw from the Andheri East by-poll in Mumbai and leave the seat for the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena’s Ratuja Latke whose husband and then sitting legislator Ramesh Latke had died of a heart attack in May last year and necessitated the by-election.

Initially, the Eknath Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena had left the seat for the BJP, which gave a ticket to Murji Patel, a Gujarati. However, Latke had a clear edge over her rivals and the BJP to save itself from any embarrassment in the event of a possible defeat exiting the contest.

It cited the long-standing political tradition in Maharashtra of not fighting a by-election if a relative of a deceased legislator decided to enter the poll fray.

“It is an acid test for Kejriwal to establish his idea of having a strong opposition against the BJP. The idea of a strong opposition should not be limited to mere lip service,” Bajwa had said.

Kejriwal was among the leaders who had strongly condemned the disqualification of former Congress president Rahul Gandhi from the Lok Sabha and urged all the opposition parties to unite against the BJP.

“Let us start from Punjab and see whether you live up to your statements. It will send a positive message across the country,” added Bajwa.

It is said that Kejriwal was in favour of leaving the seat for the Congress, but Mann stood firm on contesting the by-poll. If true, Mann seems to have clearly prevailed over Kejriwal. Is this an indication of the beginning of Mann’s assertiveness in the AAP? Only time will tell.