The Akali Dal won only two of the 10 seats it contested from in Punjab.
The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Tuesday seemed to pass the buck to the BJP for the alliance's poor performance in the Lok Sabha elections, with the party concluding at a core committee meeting in Chandigarh that Punjab's Dalit voters gravitated towards other parties for fear that the Narendra Modi government may scrap the reservation system if it returns to power.
"Dalits constitute 31.9 per cent of Punjab's population, the highest in the country. The anti-reservation rhetoric caused us a lot of damage in this election. The community felt that the BJP, which is our alliance partner, may discard the reservation system if it comes back to power," said senior SAD leader Mahesh Inder Grewal, who lost Ludhiana constituency to the Congress' Ravneet Singh Bittu. He also said that unlike popular perception, the controversy surrounding the desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib did not affect voter sentiment this time.
The marathon meeting of the core committee went on for around five hours. SAD president Sukhbir Badal, who chaired the event, did not speak to mediapersons later.
SAD contested from 10 seats, winning only two while the BJP fielded candidates from three and managed to retain two. The Congress, on the other hand, snatched eight seats and around 40 per cent votes. However, the loss of Dalit votes was only one of the many reasons cited for SAD's dismal performance in the state.
"We did not perform as well due to various reasons, but we find some consolation in the fact that our vote share increased in this election," said Mr Grewal, who is also the party spokesperson.
A post-election analysis of each parliamentary seat conducted by the party's core committee also showed that the desecration row was no longer a poll issue, the SAD leader said. "Bathinda was the worst affected due to the sacrilege incidents in Punjab. The first incident of sacrilege was reported from Faridkot. We lost Faridkot but won Bathinda, which clearly shows that sacrilege was never a poll issue," he added.
Party leaders and workers have now been asked to focus on the upcoming assembly bypolls, considering that half a dozen seats will go vacant either due to legislators moving to Parliament or resigning from their seat after jumping parties, Mr Grewal said.