As a highly politi­cised Pun­jab am­bles to­wards its next joust with elec­toral pol­i­tics – Pun­jab As­sem­bly elec­tions are due in Feb­ru­ary 2022 –will the farmer ag­i­ta­tion be the de­cid­ing fac­tor? Is there an elec­toral de­mo­graphic called ‘farm­ers’? Which way will the vote banks, not quite as­so­ci­ated with the ag­i­ta­tion, vote? How are the tra­di­tional play­ers, seem­ingly ren­dered ir­rel­e­vant at one point – Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal & Con­gress – com­ing back into reck­on­ing? Could there be an Akali Dal-BSP al­liance? Or an AAP-Break­away Akalis-BSP al­liance? Is there a fault­line be­tween elec­toral pol­i­tics and ag­i­ta­tional pol­i­tics? Will the ag­i­ta­tion/​ag­i­ta­tion­ists meta­mor­phose into a po­lit­i­cal party? SP Singh de­bates in this edi­tion of Daleel.

IN this DE­BATE WITH Baljit Balli, Ed­i­tor, Babushahi por­tal and for­merly as­so­ci­ated for decades with Ja­land­har-based Ajit news­pa­per; Sarab­jit Singh Dhali­wal, State Head, Dainik Sav­era Group and for­merly Chief of Bu­reau of The Tri­bune; Sarab­jit Pand­her, se­nior jour­nal­ist who has spent decades with me­dia houses such as PTI and The Hindu; and In­der­preet Singh, the Chief of Bu­reau, Dainik Ja­gran, we take up these oner­ous ques­tions but with a light touch.

We talk about some very an­gry peo­ple, and try and find out which way will rage vote? Who will be seen as part of the rot, and who as al­ter­na­tive? Will Amarinder Singh’s lack of ac­ces­si­bil­ity, and ques­tions about his health be a fac­tor? Given the dy­nam­ics of his not-so-en­vi­able re­la­tion­ship with Rahul Gandhi, will he be the CM face? Within Con­gress, Rahul Gandhi is more set­tled even with­out a for­mal post than he was last time.

Will the un­tir­ing war­rior of elec­toral fights, Sukhbir Singh Badal and his well-lu­bri­cated party ma­chin­ery give it an edge? Can the SAD find its his­tor­i­cal mus­cle to stand up to a strong BJP Cen­tre and a poorly run Con­gress regime here?

Many ex­perts think Amarinder Singh has been run­ning a BJP gov­ern­ment by proxy, and he does en­joy the cred­i­bil­ity ex­pected of any sec­u­lar po­lit­i­cal force, but then, Con­gress might get the Hin­dutva vote. That will be the SAD’s loss as ear­lier BJP was bring­ing in that vote.

Which way will BSP go, and what ef­fect it could have? Will farmer lead­ers har­bour po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions? Could the kisan an­dolan be­come a Kisan An­dolan Party? With Lakha Sid­hana as its youth wing leader?

What are the prospect of the much-hyped Navjot Sidhu fac­tor, Par­gat Singh fac­tor etc? What about the break­away Akali Dals? Dhind­sas are send­ing every sig­nal they are go­ing with AAP. If that hap­pens, it will fall upon Con­gress to bash the Dhind­sas, not Badals. How will peo­ple see this op­por­tunism? What about AAP be­ing B team of Con­gress rhetoric? We com­pletely skip that fac­tor called Sukh­pal Singh Khaira!

At times, we dunk the di­a­logue about oner­ous is­sues in a chit­ter-chat­ter dip to keep things a lit­tle light. Af­ter all, we live in times when it’s be­com­ing pos­si­ble to win polls with a Prashant Kishore and a lap­top.