Number Theory: SAD and its importance in Punjab's poll contest
The SAD fought the 2022 assembly elections on its own after walking out of the National Democratic Alliance on the issues of three contentious farm laws.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Punjab has seen the biggest political churn among large Indian states in the last decade. In 2014, a traditionally bipolar Punjab polity made way for a three-cornered outcome with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) winning four parliamentary constituencies (PCs) from the state. Between 2014 and 2019, the AAP saw its footprint shrinking and the Congress became dominant in the state. However, things changed drastically in 2022 when the AAP won a landslide victory in the state elections with the Congress finishing a distant second. An even bigger outcome of the 2022 contest was the almost-complete decimation of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD). But with 2024 being a four-cornered contest between the AAP, Congress, the SAD and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Akali Dal support base could very well be the 'X factor in the contest. Here are three charts which explain this in detail.
