Punjab Election Dates 2022: Voting in one phase on February 14; results on March 10

Election Commission on Saturday announced the dates for the 2022 Punjab Legislative Assembly elections which will be held in February to elect 117 members of the 16th Assembly of the Punjab Legislative Assembly. The current assembly, elected in 2017, is set to expire on 27 March. In the last Assembly elections, the Indian National Congress bagged 77 out of 117 seats, pushing the ruling alliance between Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to third place with 18 seats. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was second with 20 seats and became the official opposition in the state. 

2022 Punjab Legislative Assembly elections dates:

Punjab Elections 2017

Congress was hailed for its astounding comeback in 2017 until the party’s leadership went haywire last year after Amarinder Singh resigns as Punjab Chief Minister in September 2021. Taking a dig at the party’s leadership, after submitting his resignation, Singh had said, “I was humiliated three times by the Congress leadership in the past two months…they called the MLAs to Delhi twice and now convened a CLP here in Chandigarh today [19 September 2021].” Singh went on to officially resign from Congress, ending his more than 40 years of association with the party and launching ‘Punjab Lok Congress’. Punjab’s political turmoil of 2021Election Commission also announced the election schedule for Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa on Saturday. In Uttar Pradesh, 403 Assembly seats are slated to go to the polls and 70, 40, and 60 seats are up for grabs in Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur respectively. Amid the drastic surge of COVID-19 cases driven by the Omicron variant, Uttarakhand became the first poll-bound state to ban political rallies and protests. 

After the high political drama, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Singh took a dig at Congress’ leadership and Gandhi siblings. The former Punjab Chief Minister in his letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi said, “I actually felt deeply hurt by your conduct and that of your children... Unfortunately, rather than reining in [Navjot Singh] Sidhu, he was patronised by Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, while you chose to turn a blind eye to the shenanigans of this gentleman who was aided and abetted by the general secretary in-charge Harish Rawat, perhaps the most dubious individual.”

Presently, Congress’ Charanjit Singh Channi serves as the Chief Minister of Punjab. The high-stakes assembly elections this year are expected to make significant changes in a state that witnessed farmers protests, the dissolution of decades-old political alliances and the resignation of CM. Most recently, Punjab again came under fire after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's cavalcade on Wednesday was stranded for 15-20 minutes atop a flyover in Bathinda while en route to Ferozepur, leading to a major security breach.

Image: Republic World