On the oc­ca­sion of his plat­inum ju­bilee birth­day, soon af­ter the mar­riage of his grand­son and a lit­tle af­ter the re­lease of his au­to­bi­og­ra­phy, Ma­haraja Amarinder Singh could not have asked for more. He and his party, the In­dian Na­tional Con­gress has swept AAP off its feet and the en­trenched right wing Modi-BJP sup­ported Badals and the Badal Dal off its throne in the elec­tions to the Pun­jab Leg­isla­tive elec­tions -in the bor­der state of In­dia.

A thump­ing ma­jor­ity win with 77 seats, the peo­ple of Pun­jab have re­jected the pseudo-Pan­thic cry and pseudo-peace mon­ger­ing of the Akalis and sent back AAP, af­ter its maiden voy­age to Pun­jab. Both the run­ners up take so­lace for dif­fer­ent rea­sons -AAP for rea­son­able num­bers on its first foray and Akalis for keep­ing the new en­trant AAP at bay.

The scion of the Pa­tiala dy­nasty has put to nought all poll­sters. Exit polls have no mean­ing, it seems. Though the con­test was three-cor­nered, re­sults show that Pun­jab has stuck to its two-party rig­ma­role.

The di­choto­mous ap­proach of Amarinder Singh -torn be­tween Con­gress and Pan­thic val­ues, has won. The du­plic­ity and di­chotomy of the Akalis -from be­ing sec­u­lar to turn­ing pure Akalis on the eve of elec­tions, has lost.

Rad­i­cals -whether con­test­ing or not, hop­ing to piggy-ride AAP suc­cess, semi-rad­i­cals and in­de­pen­dents want­ing to bask in a hung as­sem­bly sce­nario, Sikh na­tion­al­ists con­test­ing for a sep­a­rate Sikh home­land, 645 non-res­i­dents of Pun­jab de­sirous of script­ing a new chap­ter in po­lit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion, com­ing in plane loads to help a poor party with glitz and fan-fare-all had to eat hum­ble pie.

The an­a­lyt­i­cal ground­work of for­mer BJP elec­tions strate­gist -Prashant Kishor and 1200 mem­ber-strong team, now with the Con­gress has paid off. Though it is an­other mat­ter that he mis­er­ably failed in Ut­tar Pradesh.

Amarinder Singh -The Peo­ple’s Ma­haraja -as his bi­og­ra­phy calls him has promised the moon -Pun­jab to be drug-free within four weeks and res­o­lu­tion of Pun­jab wa­ters and SYL is­sue. With the Supreme Court hear­ing sched­uled for 28 March, all eyes are set on the steps the Con­gress lead­er­ship will take and how the cen­tral com­mand of the Con­gress will re­act and re­spond.

The Con­gress party tag line was Chahunda Hai Pun­jab-Cap­tain di Sarkar -Peo­ple de­sire, A gov­ern­ment by Cap­tain Amarinder Singh-The peo­ple of re­sponded ap­pro­pri­ately. Now it is up to the king to live up to his promises of sav­ing the wa­ters of Pun­jab, dis­trib­ut­ing free lap­tops and mo­bile and more. He has de­clared that these are the last five years of his po­lit­i­cal life and that he will build a Pun­jab for gen­er­a­tions to re­mem­ber. Pun­jabis wait with bated breath.