Ludhiana West verdict: What’s at stake for Arvind Kejriwal’s future?

Ludhiana: The counting of votes for the Ludhiana West assembly bypoll taks place on Monday after a fierce electoral fight that Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann described as a battle between "humility" and "arrogance".

The June 19 bypoll has been regarded as a litmus test for the ruling AAP as it seeks to maintain its hold over Punjab, while the Congress looks to regain its foothold over the urban constituency which it held six times in the past.

The Aam Aadmi Party fielded Sanjeev Arora (61), a Rajya Sabha member and Ludhiana-based industrialist who is also known for his social welfare work, for the bypoll. On the other hand, the opposition Congress placed its bet on former minister and Punjab Congress working president Bharat Bhushan Ashu (51).

The BJP field senior leader Jiwan Gupta, a member of the core committee of the party's Punjab unit, while the SAD named Parupkar Singh Ghuman, a lawyer and the former president of Ludhiana Bar Association, as its candidate.

Much of the political intrigue around the Ludhiana West bypoll centers on speculation that Arvind Kejriwal was eyeing a Rajya Sabha entry, which is why AAP fielded Sanjeev Arora, a sitting Rajya Sabha MP, as its candidate.

The strategy was seen as a calculated move to clear a path for Kejriwal’s elevation to Parliament’s upper house.

However, if Arora fails to win the assembly seat, it will block the creation of a Rajya Sabha vacancy from Punjab, effectively dashing Kejriwal’s prospects of a swift parliamentary entry.

The outcome of this bypoll thus carries far-reaching consequences not just for AAP’s state politics, but for Kejriwal’s own political trajectory at the national level.

While the main contest is between the AAP and Congress, the bypoll outcome will also shed light on how the BJP performs among urban voters in Punjab. It is also going to be a test of the leadership of SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal as his party looks to resurrect itself after a series of crushing electoral losses.

The bypoll, necessitated following the death of AAP MLA Gurpreet Bassi Gogi in January, registered 51.33 per cent polling, a sharp drop from the 64 per cent voting registered in the 2022 Assembly polls. There were 14 candidates in the fray for the bypoll.

A foolproof security arrangement has been put in place at the Khalsa College for Women which will serve as the counting centre, an official said on Sunday.

A victory will be important for the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP, which faced a debacle in the Delhi Assembly elections earlier this year. In November last year, the AAP won three out of four assembly bypolls.

Before that, the party faced a drubbing in the Lok Sabha polls in which it could win only three of 13 parliamentary constituencies.

During poll campaigning, the AAP leadership urged voters to vote for Arora with party supremo Arvind Kejriwal announcing that the AAP candidate would be made the cabinet minister if he is elected in the bypoll.

Mann had described the election as a battle between "humility" and "arrogance" while highlighting that Arora represents "simplicity" while the Congress nominee is known for "arrogance." Stakes are also high for the Congress, the main opposition party that has won the seat six times in the past. He had lost the seat to AAP's Gogi by a margin of 7,512 votes in the 2022 Assembly polls.

Prestige is also at stake for the BJP in the bypoll as well.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP's Ravneet Singh Bittu led from the Ludhiana West assembly segment, which is part of the Ludhiana parliamentary seat. However, he lost to Congress nominee Amrinder Singh Raja Warring.

The Ludhiana West bypoll is also seen as a test of the leadership of Sukhbir Singh Badal, president of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), which is looking to resurrect itself after a series of crushing electoral losses.

Badal, who was elected again as party president in April after he resigned following being declared 'tankhaiya' (guilty of religious misconduct) by the Akal Takht last year, led his party's poll campaign for the party nominee Ghuman.

In the 117-member Punjab assembly, the AAP has 94 legislators, the Congress has 16 MLAs, the Shiromani Akali Dal has three, the BJP two, and the Bahujan Samaj Party one. One seat is held by an Independent.