For a party making its debut, winning 20 seats in the 2017 Punjab Assembly elections and emerging as the main opposition in the state ahead of the Shiromani Akali Dal (Akali) could have been considered an impressive feat.
But the Aam Aadmi Party’s performance was deemed disappointing at the time, with many expecting them to earn much more than their 20 count.
After all, Kejriwal’s party is considered to be a major player in rural / agrarian Punjab and, in the last election, it performed well in agrarian problem areas. Many of the 20 seats he won then were concentrated in the Malwa region, including the electoral districts of rural Bathinda, Barnala, Mansa, Rupnagar, Kharar, Sunam, Raikot, among others.
However, it can also be noted that since the 2017 Assembly polls, AAP has suffered setbacks in the form of splits. In fact, in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, he managed to win four Punjab seats. But that came down to just one in the 2019 general election: Sangrur’s Bhagwant Mann.
.
