Has emerged as a difficult electoral terrain for both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), two parties that shared a long-standing political alliance before going their separate ways. Their decision to contest independently in the 2022 Punjab Assembly election and the 2024 Lok Sabha election offered a useful measure of their individual strengths. The results showed that while both parties retain identifiable pockets of support, neither has so far demonstrated that it can independently build a broad enough coalition to dominate Punjab's highly competitive political landscape.

The BJP's experience in the 2022 Assembly election highlighted the limitations of its organisation when operating without the SAD. The party contested 73 of Punjab's 117 Assembly constituencies but won only two seats — Pathankot and Mukerian. Its vote share was around 6.6 per cent. The result reflected the BJP's relatively stronger presence in urban and semi-urban areas, but also underlined its difficulties in extending that support into large parts of rural Punjab. Without the SAD's traditional network and support among sections of the rural electorate, the BJP struggled to turn its existing pockets of influence into a statewide electoral advantage.

The 2024 Lok Sabha election presented a markedly different picture for the BJP. Contesting all 13 parliamentary seats in Punjab independently, the party increased its vote share to 18.56 per cent, representing a significant improvement over its 2022 Assembly performance. However, the increase came without any corresponding gain in seats. The BJP failed to win even one of Punjab's 13 Lok Sabha constituencies despite receiving nearly one-fifth of the state's votes. The outcome illustrated a central problem for the party: it has been able to expand its vote base, but that support has not yet been distributed in a manner that consistently produces constituency-level victories.

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The SAD faces a different set of challenges. The party has historically been one of the most important political forces in Punjab and has maintained a significant organisational presence, particularly in rural areas. Its political influence has traditionally been linked to sections of Punjab's farming communities and its long association with the state's regional politics. However, its electoral position has weakened over time, making it increasingly difficult for the party to rely solely on its traditional support base. Contesting separately from the BJP has also meant that both parties have had to confront their individual limitations without the benefit of the electoral arithmetic that once brought their support bases together.

This is where the strategic logic of a BJP-SAD partnership becomes important. The two parties have historically brought different strengths to an alliance. The BJP has generally been stronger in urban and semi-urban constituencies, while the SAD has had deeper organisational and political roots in rural Punjab. A renewed partnership could therefore potentially create a broader electoral coalition than either party can currently assemble on its own. For the BJP, an alliance could provide greater access to constituencies where its organisation remains comparatively weaker. For the SAD, cooperation could offer access to the BJP's expanded urban and non-traditional voter base.

However, an alliance would not automatically resolve either party's problems. Punjab's political landscape has changed considerably, and voters have demonstrated that they are willing to shift support between established parties and newer political alternatives. Any future BJP-SAD arrangement would therefore have to account for changing voter preferences, constituency-level dynamics and the reasons that led the two parties to pursue separate electoral paths. Simply recreating their previous alliance would not necessarily reproduce its earlier electoral impact.

The election numbers nonetheless provide a clear strategic argument for keeping the possibility of cooperation alive. The BJP's rise from 6.6 per cent in the 2022 Assembly election to 18.56 per cent in the 2024 Lok Sabha election shows that it has expanded its support base, but its failure to win a single parliamentary seat demonstrates the limits of that growth. The SAD, meanwhile, retains an organisational and rural footprint that the BJP has found difficult to replicate. Their problems are therefore different but potentially complementary. Unless either party succeeds in independently building a statewide winning coalition, the electoral arithmetic of Punjab could once again make cooperation between the BJP and SAD a strategically attractive proposition.

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