Triangular contest on most seats in Amritsar district

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Amritsar, February 4

Even as candidates of the Punjab Lok Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance, other unrecognised parties and Independents are in the fray, the contest in the majority of the 11 assembly segments in the district will primarily be triangular. In maximum constituencies, the contest is between the Congress, SAD and AAP.

Of the 11 segments in the district, the Amritsar Central seems the only exception where the contest is one-sided where Congress leader and deputy chief minister OP Soni is comfortably saddled. Political observers feel that the five-time MLA is going to hold ground this election too.

In Majitha too, debutant Ganieve Kaur is riding high as his husband Bikram Singh has been nurturing the constituency for long. To her advantage, Bikram Singh’s arch rivals — brothers Lalli Majithia and Jagga Majithia — are divided this time and contesting the election from different parties. While Lalli is an AAP candidate, Jagga is contesting on the Congress ticket.

Earlier one-sided contest was expected in the Amritsar East constituency as Congress leader Navjot Singh had announced to contest from here. However, the entry of SAD leader Bikram Singh Majithia surely seems to have turned the tables for the SAD. Sidhu could have comfortably drubbed SAD’s first choice Gurpreet Randhawa. But with Majithia in the contest, it is a different story now.

In the Amritsar North constituency, the primary contest is between SAD candidate Anil Joshi and AAP’s Kunwar Vijay Partap Singh. While Joshi and Kunwar Vijay Partap had been sweating it out among people for long, incumbent Congress MLA Sunil Dutti has entered the contest very late for which he may have to pay dearly.

No doubt, the candidates of BJP, PLC, other parties and Independents would play a role in affecting the final outcome. However, it would have to be seen that whose vote share they eat into and it helps whom. For one thing sure, PLC candidates would certainly affect Congress as most of them are former Congressmen.