Once a partner of BJP, Shiromani Akali Dal ate into its vote share

Neeraj Bagga

Amritsar, June 4

SAD’s move to field a Hindu face Anil Joshi from the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat successfully checkmated BJP’s strategy to field a Sikh face Taranjit Singh Sandhu. Though the SAD stood fourth, it ate into the BJP’s vote share in the urban segments hampering the prospects of win of its candidate Taranjit Singh Sandhu, a diplomat turned politician.

The combined vote share of the BJP and the SAD was 2,15,336 in the five urban segments while winning party candidate Gurjeet Singh Aujla of the Congress had to be satisfied with 1,38,747 votes. The Amritsar Lok Sabha seat comprises nine Assembly segments that include five urban.

Once a BJP partner, the SAD ate into its vote share in five urban segments of the Amritsar seat where the latter did not have any party base two months ago as the saffron party used to contest the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat. It was for the first time that the SAD contested from the Amritsar seat.

Political experts said the SAD had paved its way to field candidates from all Assembly segments, including urban, for the next polls. Earlier, it used to field candidates from the rural segments and its alliance partner the BJP from the urban pockets. Joshi, as a BJP candidate, who was elected MLA twice from the Amritsar North in 2007 and again in 2012, cornered 17,958 votes from the North this time. BJP’s Sandhu bagged maximum 47,184 votes from here. Together the erstwhile alliance partner would have bagged 65,142 votes from this segment. Similarly, the SAD garnered 11,451 votes from the Amritsar West from where the BJP remained runners up with 30,937 votes. Same was true for the Amritsar South from where SAD cornered 10,932 votes and the BJP 15,819 votes. The SAD bagged 10,943 votes from the Amritsar East and the BJP 29,635 votes. From the Amritsar Central, SAD got 4,905 votes and the BJP 40,477 votes.