The party’s chief rival is its Delhi ally, the AAP, which holds office in Chandigarh. The AAP won a landslide victory in the assembly polls in 2022 but is battling anti-incumbency. The party has yet to build sufficient organisational muscle and may be lacking a convincing narrative to push its case for Parliament. The BJP has credible leaders in the state but the embers of the 2020-21 farmer protests continue to glow, complicating the party’s pursuit to expand its base beyond its traditional Hindu vote. The general elections are likely to deepen the political churn in the state and lead to a reconfiguration of power relations.

The unsettled nature of the Punjab polity is a reflection of the failure of its political leaders to reconcile the contradictions in the political economy. The Congress and SAD are wedded to the paradigm of the 1960s and ’70s, which saw the state grow rich on the back of the Green Revolution. Gains from agriculture have plateaued while the social and economic crises that engulfed the state following the rise of terrorism continue to cripple the state’s political economy. Large-scale migration from the state is evidence of the political stasis. The presence of radical elements in the fray — the trust in the ballot is welcome, though — suggests that some old grievances continue to persist even though Khalistani separatism is mostly an obsession of the diaspora.

The campaign in Punjab, unfortunately, has only revealed the limitations of the political mainstream in addressing the multiple crises confronting the state. June 4 is unlikely to be a closure for the state’s restive politics.