Chandigarh: By winning seven of the total 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab, the Congress on Tuesday seemed to have maintained its grip over Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-ruled Punjab, emerging as the biggest winner from the state which witnessed a multi-cornered contest.
Though Congress had won eight seats in the 2019 general elections, the party faced a brutal drubbing in the 2022 state election when the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) not only registered a landslide victory by winning 92 out of the total 117 assembly seats, but also decimated Congress’ vote-share.
The Congress which had about 40% vote share and 18 MLAs now, has come down to about 26% this time, but, the party has bagged seven seats across the three regions of the state – Malwa, Majha and Doaba. It has won Ludhiana, Ferozepur, Fatehgarh Sahib (SC) and Patiala (Malwa), and two seats – Gurdaspur and Amritsar (Majha) and Jalandhar (SC) seat (Doaba).
Former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi has come out as one of the Congress’ giant killers who has won the Jalandhar (SC) seat by a huge margin and trouncing BJP’s Sushil Rinku, who was Congress’ own sitting MLA from Jalandhar West till recently but had hopped over to the saffron party along with another MLA.
The two other prominent winners of Congress are Dr Dharamvira Gandhi and state party chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring; while Gandhi has defeated another former Congress stalwart and four-time MP Preneet Kaur who had also joined BJP recently in Patiala, Warring trounced his party’s turncoat and two-time MP Ravneet Bittu from Ludhiana.
The remaining four Congress winners are: Gurjeet Singh Aujla from Amritsar, Amar Singh from Fatehgarh Sahib, Sher Singh Ghubaya, Ferozepur and former deputy chief minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa from Gurdaspur.
AAP SHOW "UNIMPRESSIVE’’
Even though Punjab has been the only state in the country which elected AAP MPs since 2014 general polls, its score of three out of 13 this time appears far from being impressive. The party which had a brute majority in the state assembly and which had fielded at least five Cabinet ministers and many more MLAs failed to yield desired results, several poll observers opined.
The AAP in Punjab had won four MPs in 2014 – Bhagwant Mann, from Sangrur seat, Dharamvira Gandhi, from Patiala, Harinder Singh Khalsa, Fatehgarh Sahib and Prof Sadhu Singh, from Faridkot, and only one in 2019 – Bhagwant Mann.
However, since Mann had vacated his seat and won Dhuri assembly seat and became the chief minister, his seat was won by Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) chief Simranjit Singh Mann. However, the AAP’s Sushil Rinku won the Jalandhar Lok Sabha seat after the demise of Congress’ sitting MP Santokh Choudhary, during Rahul Gandhi led Bharat Jodo Yatra, the former hopped over to BJP recently.
However, this time, the AAP’s three nominees have won – Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer from Sangrur, Raj Kumar Chabbewal from Hoshiarpur seat and Malvinder Singh Kang from Anandpur Sahib.
Meanwhile, even though the Harsimrat Kaur Badal of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has succeeded in retaining her Bathinda seat doubling her previous margins of about 20,000, the BJP, failed to even open its account. Both SAD and BJP had fought on all the 13 seats, alone.
