One-sided result for AAP in Jalandhar West bypoll; two-time loser from BJP, Mohinder Bhagat third-time lucky

Deepkamal Kaur

Jalandhar, July 13

It was completely one-sided result for the ruling Aam Aadmi Party in the Jalandhar West Assembly byelection on Saturday. The polling was held on July 10.

The AAP maintaining a lead of almost 3,000 in each of the 13 rounds.

Bhagat bagged 55,246 votes. BJP’s Sheetal Angural got 17,921 votes and Congress’ Surinder Kaur trailed on third position with just 16,757 votes.

The ‘withdrawn’ SAD candidate Surjit Kaur got just 1,242 votes while BSP’s Binder Kumar Lakha polled 734 votes.

The AAP, which was polled just 15 K votes a month back from this segment in the Lok Sabha elections, made a huge comeback decimating all other candidates.

The impact of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann stay put in Jalandhar in his rented house with his family for about 20 days, his family going door-to-door and the entire Cabinet camping in Jalandhar paid off the party well.

The shift of Bhagat to AAP from the BJP has helped his finally make it to the Vidhan Sabha, may be for less than three years. He had contested twice from the BJP on this seat in 2017 and 2022, but had lost both times. Up from the AAP this time, he remained lucky.

The stepping down of Angural as MLA and shifting to the BJP, however, proved suicidal for him. Angural left the counting centre after the first three rounds.

The Congress, which had been riding high on having given ticket to a grass-root party worker and maintaining attack on party hoppers, showed a poor performance falling far low on the third position. The same area voters had given as many as 44K votes to Congress’ Charanjit Channi in June 1 LS poll.