The Congress in Punjab can afford to wait for the outcome of the elections on Saturday with hopes high as nine of the 13 constituencies in Punjab go for polling in the fifth and last phase of elections on Thursday. It had lost all but two seats in the 2004 elections and is set to win more than half the seats at stake this year.

The long-drawn campaign, which witnessed a flurry of leaders on the last two days including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, L K Advani, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Rajnath Singh, Lalu Prasad, Narendra Modi, Nitish Kumar and others, is being seen as a contest for political supremacy of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and his son, Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal, on the one hand, and former chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh on the other.

Besides fielding family members — Amarinder’s wife and son, and Sukhbir’s wife — the party candidates have also been handpicked by them. The common thread in the campaigns of both Amarinder and Badal was the abundance of vicious personal attacks. Of late, however, the Akalis have started saying that the outcome would be no reflection on the functioning of the state government.

What has added spice to the elections in Punjab is that at least four Congress candidates are part of the “youth brigade” handpicked by Rahul Gandhi in consultation with Amarinder, and are contesting for the first time. These include the first-ever elected president of the Punjab Youth Congress, Ravneet Bittu, 33, who is also the grandson of slain chief minister Beant Singh. He is contesting against SAD first-timer D S Cheema, who was also the political advisor to Parkash Badal. By all indications, a close contest is on the cards with pollsters favouring Bittu.

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