Residents of the northern Indian state will vote in state assembly elections, which are viewed as a litmus test for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP party.
People in the northern Indian state of Punjab have cast their ballots in state assembly elections that are considered as a gauge of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party's popularity ahead of federal elections in 2024, according to the Election Commission.
According to local media sources, over 68 percent of the 21 million registered voters cast their ballots on Sunday afternoon.
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| [Prabhjot Gill/AP Photo] |
According to analysts, Punjab is holding one of the most hotly contested elections in the country because the results will show whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been successful in quelling the resentment of Sikh farmers by repealing the contentious farm laws that sparked a more than year-long protest by farmer groups.
Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, participated in the third phase of the seven-phase election process as well. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which rules a state with a population of 200 million people, confronts a serious battle from the Samajwadi Party, which is the primary opposition party.
Farmers are one of the most significant voting blocs in India.
As Al Jazeera's Elizabeth Puranam reported, "These are the first elections in Punjab since the year-long agricultural demonstrations against laws that they felt would put them at the mercy of multinational businesses."
"The wellbeing of farmers is always a major concern in our state, which is regarded as India's breadbasket," she explained.
Aam Admi Party and Sanyukt Samaj Morcha, a newly founded political party, are competing against Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The incumbent Congress party, the Shiromani Akali Dal, the Aam Admi Party, and the existing Congress party are all pitted against Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party.
The results will be revealed on the 10th of March.
As a candidate for the Sanyukt Samaj Morcha or the United Farmers Front, the umbrella group of agricultural unions that organized the agitation, Amandeep Kaur Dholewal, who worked at a medical camp at one of the protest locations last year, is running for the position of medical camp director.
I'm getting asked 'Why are you late?' I don't know. "We had been expecting you," Dholewal said, according to the Associated Press. Aside from that, the 37-year-old doctor stated that "people now know their rights."
In this election, voters will decide if riding the crest of a yearlong wave of demonstrations that forced Modi to make a rare retreat and repeal the agricultural regulations would be enough to prevent his party from making advances in a state that is known as the "grain bowl of India."
By utilizing its executive powers, Modi's BJP was able to force the agriculture legislation through Parliament without consultation in September 2020. He and his administration defended the legislation as essential improvements, but farmers worried that they marked a shift away from a system where they sold their product only in government-approved marketplaces, as had been the case previously. They were concerned that this would leave them poorer and more vulnerable to the whims of big enterprises.
Farmers — the most of whom were Sikhs from Punjab state – camped on the outskirts of New Delhi for a year in protest, enduring a hard winter and a deadly coronavirus outbreak throughout the course of the year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked the restrictions in November, only three months before the key elections in Punjab and four other states.
Modi's BJP has a relatively minor presence in Punjab, but it intends to establish a government there with a regional ally and grow its budding support base among farmers, who constitute one of the country's largest voting blocs, in the next elections. A test for his party's Hindu nationalist reach in Punjab, where people are immensely proud of their state's religious syncretism, as well as a test for his party's Hindu nationalist influence in northern India, which has blossomed in most of the country since 2014.
SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES
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