Here's how Punjab voted in previous three Lok Sabha elections

Polling in Punjab, which has 13 parliamentary seats, will be held on a single day on May 19 in the last phase of the seven-phase Lok Sabha election.

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh. Photo: Twitter

NEW DELHI: Polling in Punjab, which has 13 parliamentary seats, will be held on a single day on May 19 in the last phase of the seven-phase Lok Sabha election. The main fight here is between the Congress, the BJP-SAD alliance and the AAP, which won a historic four Lok Sabha seats in 2014. It is one state where the Congress does not need any partners. The Congress clearly believes that it has an upper hand because the opposition is a fractured and fragmented unit. The SAD saw a few senior leaders being expelled or leaving it in November last year and floating a new outfit - the SAD (Taksali). Whatever SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal may claim about the new outfit as being of no consequence, the Taksali old guard will cause some dent into the votes of the SAD - the second oldest party (established in 1920) in the country after the Congress. The BJP is resigned to the fact, and position, of playing second fiddle to the SAD in Punjab's political affairs. The SAD, which has been cornered by the Congress on the sensitive issue of sacrilege of the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, has its back to the wall. The AAP, which is the main opposition in the Punjab assembly, has seen a number of senior leaders either being suspended or leaving the party in the past 3-4 years. The party cadre is in disarray at the ground level. Repeating its 2014 performance would be an uphill task for the AAP which is fast losing its support base. The AAP is trying hard for an alliance with the SAD (Taksali). Breakaway leaders from six smaller parties parties have recently floated the Punjab Democratic Alliance (PDA). Amidst all this, the Congress continues to sit pretty - watching the opposition in a virtual self-destruct mode. How Punjab voted in previous three Lok Sabha elections In the 2014 general elections, Punjab virtually voted against the national pro-BJP voting trend. The SAD-BJP alliance could manage only six out of the 13 Lok Sabha seats (SAD got 4 and BJP got 2). The AAP, which was routed in all other states, managed to win four Lok Sabha seats from Punjab with 24.5 per cent vote share and get it first representatives in the Lok Sabha. The Congress won three seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Its tally is now four after it won the Gurdaspur seat in a by-election in 2017. The bypoll was necessitated by the death of four-time BJP MP from the seat, actor-turned-politician Vinod Khanna. In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress had won up eight seats in Punjab while the SAD had taken four with the BJP following on one. The Congress got 45.23 per cent of the total votes, while the SAD received 33.85 per cent votes. The BJP had managed 10.06 percent vote share. In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, the SAD won eight seats while the BJP won three. The Congress managed two seats. (With inputs from agencies)