The Punjab Legislative Assembly Elections, 1992: Breakthrough or Breakdown?

Abstract

In retrospect, the February 1992 PLA elections marked a critical turning point in containing the Sikh militancy which had afflicted the state. From the Lok Sabha elections in Punjab in 1989, when the militant Sikhs and their allies established a semblance of democratic legitimacy by capturing the popular vote, the road to February 1992 witnessed the growth of mass terror, counterinsurgency, and the postponement of the PLA elections in June 1991 on the eve of polling — elections which, most commentators at the time predicted, would have produced a militant-led government. Against the militants’ efforts to restructure Sikh politics along radical nationalist lines, the central governments followed the strategy of isolating the militants by using violent control. Subsequently the 1992 PLA elections gave democratic justification to violent control but in the immediate aftermath the success of this strategy was by no means certain.