5/9: Cong spoils AAP plans in Jalandhar

Deepkamal Kaur

Jalandhar, March 10

Even as Aam Aadmi Party emerged victorious with as many as 92 of 117 seats across Punjab, its victory plans in Jalandhar got spoiled as Congress remained frontrunner from here getting five of the nine seats from the district. The AAP got the remaining four seats from here making inroads into the district for the first time.

In fact, the Congress maintained the tally of five that it got in 2017 polls too. This time, Congress was triumphant on five seats — Phillaur, Adampur, Jalandhar Cantonment, Jalandhar North and Shahkot. The SAD, however, got decimated to nil even as it had four previously.

Having faced a hat-trick of defeats from Phillaur in 2007, 2012 and 2017, Chaudhary family finally managed to regain the Assembly seat this time. Jalandhar MP Chaudhary Santokh Singh had twice represented the seat in 1997 and 2002. Last time, his son Vikramjit Chaudhary had lost to SAD’s Baldev Khaira. But this time, he trounced with a margin of 12,303 votes, which also turned out to be the highest from among all the winning candidates of the party from across Punjab.

Shahkot’s Hardev Singh Laddi Sherowalia secured the second highest margin of 12,079 votes from among the Congress winners. While Laddi had lost from SAD’s stalwart leader and ex-minister Ajit Singh Kohar in 2017, the bypoll in 2018 post his demise helped him establish himself by winning with a margin of 38,801 votes against Kohar’s son Naib Singh Kohar. This time Kohar’s grandson Bachitar Singh Kohar had contested against him and Laddi proved himself yet again.

In Adampur, new Congress entrant Sukhwinder Kotli defeated his own friend and SAD’s two-time sitting MLA Pawan Tinu. Kotli, who has been with BSP earlier, is learnt to have helped Tinu in his previous elections but this time he clearly wanted his own victory getting ticket from a bigger platform. Even in their campaign, Kotli and Tinu never personally targeted each other. Instead, they only attacked their rival parties. Kotli polled 39,554 votes defeating Tinu with 4567 votes.

From Jalandhar Cantonment, Congress’ Pargat Singh won with a margin of 5808 votes. He won in the initial rounds after which he began to trail from AAP’s Surinder Singh Sodhi. He again started winning in the last three-four rounds and his margin kept on increasing. Both Pargat and Sodhi have been Arjuna awardee hockey Olympians. Pargat remained SP in Punjab Police before becoming Director Sports while Sodhi had retired as Inspector General. Jagbir Brar of SAD came third with 25,996 votes and BJP’s Sarabjit Makkar polled only 15,494 votes. In Jalandhar North, Congress candidate Bawa Henry got 47338 votes and registered his victory with a lead of 9486 votes.

Among other wins were Jalandhar Central, where AAP’s Raman Arora, who won by a thin margin of 247 votes from Congress’ Rajinder Beri. AAP’s Sheetal Angural won by 4253 votes in Jalandhar West with total 39213 votes against Congress’ Sushil Rinku. Balkar Singh from Kartarpur won by 4574 votes against Congress’ Surinder Chaudhary. Inderjit Kaur Mann from Nakodar constituencies took 42,868 votes and won by a margin of 2869 votes from SAD candidate. Orthopaedician and Congress candidate Dr Navjot Dahiya came third getting 33,979 votes.