Chandigarh, 2/6:On January 13, 2022, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) launched a mobile number on which it asked the people of Punjab to give their feedback on its chief ministerial candidate. This “janata chunegi apna CM” drive helped the AAP declare singer turned politician Bhagwant Mann as its chief ministerial face for the Punjab Assembly polls. A teary-eyed Mann then vowed never to let the people of Punjab down. However, two months later, there are enough reasons why the former Sangrur MP needs some soul searching on whether he has lived up to his promises.
The AAP’s massive win in the Punjab assembly elections has contributed to its soaring ambitions to increase its national footprint and project itself as a credible alternative opposition to the BJP. This has also meant remote controlling Punjab from Delhi by flanking Punjab bureaucrats to follow Kejriwal’s Delhi durbar. While such optics have played out under the media glare, Punjab has become a powder keg.
The rocky start for Mann began in April when radical Sikh elements came out in large numbers brandishing swords to oppose an anti-Khalistan march, which followed violence and a curfew. The episode was seen as evidence of the Mann government’s administrative lapses, with the chorus growing about a possible revival of the Khalistan movement under the AAP government.
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