Constituency Watch Special: Amritsar Updated till 12 Noon: Arun Jaitley Runaway hit!
Amritsar City itself is divided into 5 assembly parts – North, South, East, West and Central, while it also is made up of 4 surrounding assembly segments of Majitha, Raja Sansi, Ajnala and Attari. Traditionally, Punjab politics has been neatly divided along the Sikh-Hindu fault-lines, wherein the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) is widely perceived as catering to Sikhs (especially the upper and middle crest), whereas Congress was seen as a centrist party with core Punjabi Hindu plus Dalit and lower segments of Sikh voters. BJP after joining SAD as a partner has been bringing I the substantial Hindu vote to the alliance. Amritsar too functions along similar lines which made life difficult to BJP’s Navjot Singh Sidhu in 2009.
- In Amritsar city, Congress actually led in all the segments except for Amritsar South (a Sikh stronghold of Akalis). This was partially because of the traditional Akali-Congress fault lines but mainly due to anti-incumbency faced by Sidhu in the last elections.
- In Amritsar-Rural, the picture was reversed, wherein BJP-SAD led in all the segments comfortably due to the Akali strength.
- A similar picture got replicated some 3 years later in 2012 assembly elections when SAD swept all the rural seats except Raja Sansi whereas in Amritsar city Congress and BJP shared the honours because of some smart ticket decisions by NDA
What has made the contest very interesting today is the entry of two heavy weights, Arun Jaitley of the BJP and former CM captain Amrinder Singh of the Congress. What are the trends we are trying to discern? Have the city voters of Amritsar changed their preference this time due to a Modi wave? – we are tracking close to 70 polling booths in the city to keep a tab on this. Has Amrinder Singh been able to dent the traditional Sikh voters of Akali disposition in 2014 by pitching himself against Jaitley? – we are tracking about 30 polling booths of the surrounding regions for this.
What is happening today is that AAP is hurting Congress badly in Amritsar, which is giving runaway leads to Arun Jaitley of BJP. In fact, the lead could be stunning for BJP at the end of the day! What is important is that BJP is getting big leads in both the city as well as rural areas, so this is probably a no contest which was earlier billed as a weak wicket for Jaitley. The real extent of leads will be known by evening when the full impact of the Akalis ability to manage rural Amritsar will hit us with numbers. We are safely projecting at 1 PM that Arun Jaitley has probably taken big early leads which are almost unassailable for Congress’s Captain Amrinder Singh!
