New Delhi: Former Union minister and Congress candidate Manish Tewari wrested the Anandpur Sahib seat from Shiromani Akali Dal nominee Prem Singh Chandumajra on Thursday.Tewari defeated the two-time MP by a margin of 46,884 votes, according to the Election Commission results.The senior Congress leader had been in the lead against Chandumajra since counting of votes began at 8 am.§Trends indicate that the Congress is holding its ground in Punjab after winning a majority in the 2017 assembly elections. The party is leading in 8 of the 13 seats, while the SAD is leading in 2, the BJP on 1 and the AAP in 1.At the last count, SAD’s Sukhbir Badal, former deputy chief minister of the state, was leading by a margin of over 30,000 votes in Firozpur.Sunny Deol, BJP’s candidate from Gurdaspur is leading by a margin of almost 60,000 votes.While most Muslims candidates are losing in the heartland in Faridkot, a Muslim candidate Md. Sadique is winning. Interestingly, the constituency has negligible a Muslim population.Punjab warded off the Modi wave in 2014, giving the Bhartiya Janata Party just two seats out of a total of 13. The Shiromani Akali Dal, the BJP’s senior alliance partner in the state, won 4, the Congress party won 4 and the debutant Aam Aadmi Party also won 4 seats.The AAP – whose influence was primarily restricted to Delhi – outperformed with a vote share of 24% which resulted in the reduction of vote shares of both the SAD/BJP and the Congress.Three years later, the AAP emerged as the principal opposition party in the triangular assembly elections, winning 20 seats with a vote share of 23%. In fact, it won more seats than the SAD which only managed 15 seats. The BJP won only three of the 23 it contested.The Congress pulled off a surprise by winning 77 seats of the 117 in the state and forming the government under the leadership of Captain Amarinder Singh. It ended the decade long SAD-BJP regime in the agrarian state.Five years down the line, the Congress is likely to hold its ground in light of the people’s reluctance to give the SAD political primacy while the BJP continues to remain a smaller partner in the state despite a favourable mood for the party in North India.The AAP seems to be in a rut with a virtual split in the party’s leadership in the state. Things began to go south in 2015, when two of the four MP’s – Dharamvira Gandhi and Harinder Khalsa – challenged the central leadership and were subsequently suspended from the party.Local issues like agrarian crisis, unemployment and rampant drug abuse continue to dominate the campaign. Despite Punjab having carved out an image as a prosperous agricultural state, in the last few decades it has been racked with agrarian distress.Though political analysts had predicted a possible AAP victory in the state, the party’s performance was affected by factionalism within its ranks. Since then, the AAP has struggled to reclaim political ground in the state.Punjab’s paradox is high levels of productivity on the one hand and farmer suicides on the other. Since 2000, more than 16,000 farmers have committed suicide in the state.Due to low level of incomes from the farm, people have been pushed out of agriculture, with no job prospects in other sectors. Industries only grew to a limited extent in the post-1991 industrialisation phase in India due to the impacts of militancy which continued till 1995.Alongside the bleak economic situation, drug abuse has played a major role in derailing the state. The AAP in 2014 and 2017 had found some success in highlighting drug abuse as a major electoral issue. However, in the 2019 elections, the issue seems to have been missing from the poll agenda of political parties.(With PTI inputs)