BJP’s Amardeep wins ward byelection for Solan Municipal Corporation

BJP’s Amardeep defeated Congress’ Puneet Narang by 283 votes in the byelection for Solan Municipal Corporation held on Sunday.

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Solan SDM Punam Bansal confirmed that Amardeep polled 523 votes as against 240 polled by Narang, while two votes were cast against NOTA.

As many as 765 votes were cast in the poll which witnessed great enthusiasm among the voters who had turned up in good numbers throughout the day.

With this victory, the strength of BJP councillors has once again climbed to six. The seat had fallen vacant after the demise of BJP councillor Kulbhushan Gupta in March 2024.

The party was keen to wrest back this seat and retain its strength in the civic body.

Amardeep, who is a popular figure in his ward, was no match for Congress’ Puneet Narang, who could not even secure 50 per cent of his votes.

Optimistic of winning the seat, Narang had resigned from the post of a nominated councillor before filing his nomination. Facing leadership crisis in the ward, the Congress had fielded Narang even though a section of the party functionaries were in favour of filing some other candidate.

Though the result will not impact the political equations in the civic body as the Congress has a lion’s share of nine out of 17 councillors but this loss reflects poorly on the ruling party and the leadership of Health and Family Welfare Minister DR Shandil, who is a senior cabinet minister.

Since the past two years, the internal bickering among nine Congress councillors in the civic body has once again been exposed in this byelection as the party functionaries had already conceded defeat days before the election.

Though the Pradesh Congress Committee president had directed all councillors, including nominated and elected, to campaign for their candidate but it failed to help.

On the other hand, the BJP accorded significance to this ward election with its vice-president Sanjeev Katwal camping here for days to oversee the campaigning.