The Third Eye: Keeping up vigil in Punjab

New Delhi: At least two protagonists of Khalistan won the parliamentary elections in Punjab with large margins making it easier for them to further push the separatist agenda in the sensitive border state.Khalistan ideologue Amritpal Singh lodged in Dibrugarh jail under the National Security Act, secured victory with a margin of 1.93 lakh votes — the highest in this election in Punjab.Significantly, the Akali Dal registered a decline — winning only the Bathinda seat — which could be interpreted as a weakening of the moderate Sikh voice.The AAP got three seats that did not set any trend but the relative performance of the Congress and the BJP showed interesting pointers. The BJP increased its vote share from 6.6 to 19 per cent without scoring any victory while Congress lost its vote by a corresponding 13 per cent and won 7 of the 13 seats in the state.The Jat Sikh and Dalit vote apparently shifted to the Congress while the Hindus seemed to have rallied behind the BJP.Incidentally in the parliamentary election in nearby Haryana, the Congress and the BJP equally shared the ten seats of the state — all at the cost of regional groupings — which was welcome to the extent it showed the voter’s preference for mainstream