The results of the Bihar poll have put the Bharatiya Janata Party in a dilemma in Punjab as it now has to decide whether to go it alone or continue its alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) for the 2017 Assembly election.
The defeat in Bihar is being seen as a setback and a section of the party favours going it alone in 2017. The SAD-BJP alliance has been under strain since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections when the partners put up a below-par performance.
Sources said BJP leaders and the party’s cadre in Punjab feel that even after being an active coalition partner of the government with four Cabinet Ministers, it has a negligible role in decision-making.
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Political observers believe that had the BJP won in Bihar, there may have been a crisis in the alliance. But now there is little chance of that. The victory of the grand alliance in Bihar has kept the relevance of coalition politics alive in Punjab.
BJP cadres have been actively working for the past one year in the rural areas of Punjab to consolidate the party’s position. This had, in fact, set off alarm bells in the SAD as the leadership perceived this as an attempt to eat into the party’s vote bank.
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Before the Bihar election, the State BJP leadership had publicly said there was a lot of time for the Punjab elections and it can’t be said if both the parties would contest together. “Such decisions are taken by the party leadership,” BJP State president Kamal Sharma was quoted as having said. Such statements were seen by observers as an indication of a rift between the two.
‘Ties unbreakable’
However, after the Bihar loss, it seems unlikely that the BJP and the SAD will part ways. “The SAD-BJP alliance in Punjab is unbreakable and nothing will happen to it,” SAD secretary general Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa said in a statement.