Two Sikh fundamentalists have been elected as Independent candidates from Punjab, with one of them currently lodged in an Assam jail.

The Lok Sabha polls in Punjab have thrown up a mixed bag of MPs with all the major parties contesting separately. Out of the 13 seats in Punjab, the Congress got seven and the AAP three. Even with a vote share of 18.56, the BJP drew a blank. The Sukhbir Singh Badal-led Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) could win only one seat.

The two Independents — Amritpal Singh from Khadoor Sahib and Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa from Faridkot (SC) — however sprung a surprise. Amritpal is currently held under the National Security Act in Assam’s Dibrugarh prison for raiding a police station with his Waris Punjab De separatist group last year.

Sarabjeet is the son of Beant Singh, one of the two guards who assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984. Formerly with the pro-Khalistan party Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) and the BSP, Sarabjeet sought votes by highlighting that he lost his youth to alleged police harassment. Sarabjeet has raised issues of Sikh identity like the 2015 sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib in Bargari, which falls within the Faridkot seat.

Chandigarh-based political scientist Jatinder Singh said: “There is deep resentment among Sikhs for the Bargari sacrilege. The Akalis were voted out on the issue in 2017. In 2022, the AAP also campaigned on the issue and the police firing that followed claimed two lives. People feel no party has done anything serious on this and that a Delhi-based political leadership is running Punjab. The vote for these two (Independent candidates) is a response to this as well as the insecurity of religious minorities under the Modi government and the defaming of farmer protesters as terrorists.”

Arrests were made in the sacrilege case, but conspiracy theories continued. The Akali government even added Section 295AA to the penal code to specifically criminalise the sacrilege of religious texts.

Jatinder explained that the supporters of the icons of a resurgent Sikh identity come from the same social class as the protesters defending the rights of farmers — landed Jat Sikhs. “The farmer unions did not articulate Sikh identity issues as they see them as divisive. But youths do respond to the politics of their religious identity as minorities,” he said.

The outgoing Parliament has SAD (Amritsar) leader Simranjit Singh Mann — the best-known proponent of Khalistan. Mann supported Amritpal but fielded a candidate against Sarabjeet. Mann from Sangrur and his son Emaan from Amritsar faced crushing defeats.