Punjab elections 2027: CBI probe, Congress shake-up and a BJP-SAD question mark leave AAP facing its toughest test
CBI probe into CM Mann's aides, a new Punjab Congress chief and BJP-SAD alliance buzz. Here is where Punjab politics stands ahead of the 2027 election
Punjab elections 2027: Just two months an election year begins, every major party in Punjab has a problem it hasn't solved.
Start with the party in power. AAP did well in the May municipal polls, taking 954 seats and just under half the vote, while the Congress managed 393 and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) 192. That gives Bhagwant Mann a talking point. But a civic body result is not an Assembly verdict.
Today's Punjab and Haryana High Court order handing the ED's corruption allegations against his close aides to the CBI changes the mood. The HC was blunt that the Punjab Police had handled the matter poorly. Whatever the CBI finds, the opposition now has a ready-made line and the government has to explain why its own police didn't act first.
The Congress has chosen this moment to reshuffle. Pargat Singh replaces Amarinder Singh Raja Warring as the PPCC chief with Sachin Pilot brought in alongside him. The high command evidently saw divisions it could no longer ignore. Changing a captain this late can steady a side or unsettle it and the Congress has a history of doing the latter. Pargat Singh met Rahul Gandhi in Delhi on Monday, but a photo is not a united unit.
The BJP is playing two games at once. State president Kewal Singh Dhillon says the party will fight all 117 seats and that no alliance talks are on. Yet Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 7 and some reports claim seat-sharing talks are well advanced. Both parties have denied a deal. The two broke up in 2020 over the farm laws and they won 68 seats together in 2012, so a reunion would matter.
Then there is law and order. Opposition leaders are pointing to firings, extortion and attacks on police personnel. Some of that is routine campaign rhetoric, but a government that has promised change cannot afford a prolonged argument about safety.
My reading: this is the most open Punjab contest in over a decade. AAP has a base but a growing liability, Congress has energy but little cohesion, and the BJP and SAD hold the only variable that could reshuffle the arithmetic. The next few months will say more about the outcome than any survey.
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