Are people in Amritsar ready for the `’outsider’ BJP’s candidate Again?

Amritsar/Opinderjit Singh

With the upcoming 2024-Lok Sabha polls drawing nearer, the Bharatiya Janata Party candidates are flexing muscles for the party tickets. The party has not opened its cards so far as it is weighing many options as the local mood is that the party candidate must be a local face. The party has faced defeats thrice in the last parliamentary polls and is considering all possibilities while there is there is a general talk of some ‘outsider’ or paratrooper testing the polls waters, though there are a number of local party candidates’ names doing the rounds too.
The general perception in Amritsar parliamentary constituency is that people want a local face. The outsider including the former late Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had faced defeat in Lok Sabha polls and present Union Minister Hardeep Puri was another popular face who had witnessed elections debacle in 2019.
The perception is that the party must bank upon the local face as had been the practice with the Congress or other opposition parties. People want a candidate who is accessible to the public and approachable as the outsider hardly understand and know the local issues. “We have seen many outsiders who were unsuccessful in the past. We want the person who is deep rooted locally and can find solutions to peoples’ woes”, said a local activist.
Amritsar constituency was once represented by Navjot Singh Sidhu in Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2014 when he was in BJP and his candidature was changed and Jaitley unsuccessfully contested the seat. If we take a peep into history, the Amritsar constituency has been won by the Congress largely.
In 1966 when the state of Punjab was re-organized after carving out Himachal and Haryana, Akali leader Bikram Majithia’s grandfather Surjit Singh Majithia won from Congress ticket and became Minister in the Nehru government. The seat was represented by Durga Das Bhatia and then by his younger brother RL Bhatia who represented the seat five times.

It was in 1977 that Janata Party’s Baldev Parkash won the seat with Akalis’s help. Congress RL Bhatia won the seat in 1980 and repeated the victory in 1984 but he was defeated by Janata Party’s Kirpal Singh in 1989. All these top leaders were local voice and Amritsar emerged as prominent voice in the arena of politics.

Congress’s RL Bhatia re-captured the seat in 1991 and again won in 1996 but again he was defeated by BJP’s Daya Singh Sodhi in 1998. He won the seat again in 1999 but he was defeated by Navjot Singh Sidhu in 2004 and again in 2009. In 2014 Captain Amarinder won by defeating Arun Jaitley.

The BJP’s tryst with the outsider had been a debacle in neighbouring Gurdaspur Lok Sabha constituency as popular film actor Sunny Deol, the present MP had been accused of ignoring the constituency. He did not even visit once after winning the seat in 2019. On the other hand, when Congress and AAP are vying for local voice to be fielded as candidates in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP is still weighing many options., said the insiders adding that the peoples’ perceptions are still writ large and party had no option but to go as per the local workers and leaders’ choices.