Showdown between Akali Dal's moderate and radical factions in Qila Rajpur

Akali Dal (Badal) president Parkash Singh Badal and radical Akali Dal (Amritsar) chief Simranjit Singh Mann will clash in the traditional Akali constituency of Qila Raipur in Ludhiana district.

From a struggle for a mere assembly seat the fight has taken on the shape of a conflict between two different ideologies -- characterised by Badal and Mann -- for the betterment of Punjab.

Qila Raipur has the ideal rural Sikh electorate to determine the fortunes of the moderate and radical wings whose leaders take on each other for the first time in an election after more than a decade.

The importance of this seat can also be gauged from the fact that Badal -- who was assured by party activists that he would not need to campaign for the seat which he is contesting in addition to his traditional Lambi constituency in Muktsar district -- has been forced to campaign in Qila Raipur for the last two days during which he has gone to a nearly two-thirds of all villages.

Badal is clearly not taking any chances. His son, Sukhbir Singh Badal, MP, will stand in for him during the end of the campaign.

Both Badal and Mann are outsiders in Qila Raipur -- Mann is also contesting the election from the Sirhind constituency nearby. Mann created the showdown by filing his papers for the seat after Badal had filed his nomination papers following much public drama.

Mann has not been able to give any convincing answer for contesting from this constituency except saying "my status is such that I should fight from here". His erstwhile colleague and former party MP Rajinder Kaur Bulara who has now joined the Akali Dal (Badal), puts it more succinctly, saying "it is jatt di jidd" (obstinancy of a jat Sikh).

The Akali Dal (Amritsar) lost the Qila Raipur and Doraha seats, part of which falls in this assembly segment, in the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee election.

Mann will be banking on the so-called scheduled castes who form nearly 30 per cent of the electorate in the constituency. His party has an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party, to whom dalits owe their allegiance to.

The radical Akali leader has temporarily cloaked his hardline ideology and maintains a silence over the issue of sampooran azadi (complete freedom) or an independent Sikh state to which his party is committed. Mann has released no manifesto and as one of his supporters put it, ''whatever Mr Mann says is our manifesto.''

A strong Congress candidate would have benefitted by the presence of two Akali candidates but Jagdev Singh Jassowal, who was a legislator from neighbouring Raikot in 1980, is not getting much support from Congress leaders in the area.The CPI-M candidate and the incumbent legislator, Tarsem Lal Jodhan, does not not have the resources to take on the Akali stalwarts.

Although Jodhan was vocal on the issues of the area, he won in 1992 by polling only 1,906 votes out of a total of 4,272 votes -- figures which will have no relevance this time. Except for Jodhan's win in the 1992 poll, the seat has always returned an Akali candidate.