11 of 14 bypoll candidates lost their security deposits

The results for the Ludhiana West bypoll were declared on Monday, giving much happiness to the winning camp. At the same time, 11 out of the total 14 candidates, who had filed their nomination papers for the byelection, failed to save their security deposits, which were forfeited. SAD candidate Parupkar Singh Ghuman has also lost his security deposit as he needed over 6,600 more votes to secure the same.

Confirming this, Returning Officer Roopinder Singh said barring AAP candidate Sanjeev Arora, BJP candidate Jiwan Gupta and Congress candidate Bharat Bhushan Ashu, all other 11 candidates had their security deposits forfeited.

A candidate had to get at least 14,897 votes out of the total 89,367 polled, which makes a share of 16.67 per cent. All those candidates who failed to get the required votes polled in their favour, will forfeit their security, which is around Rs 10,000.

One of the leaders in the SAD, wishing not to be quoted, said it was shocking that a SAD candidate failed to get sufficient votes in his favour and lost security deposit in the election. “The party has to think on it in a critical manner, what has put a real dent? If it was infighting with Manpreet Ayali, who developed frictions with SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal or was it the urban Hindu committed vote, which did not vote for Akalis, etc,” said the leader, adding that Ghuman left no stone unturned as far as the campaigning was concerned.

Many other candidates had to borrow money to deposit the security. The other candidates who lost security deposits included Renu, Neetu Shattran Wala, Jatinder Kumar Sharma, Navneet Kumar Gopi, Albert Dua, Gurdeep Singh Kahlon, Paramjit Singh Bharaj, Pawandeep Singh, Baldev Raj Katna and Rajesh Sharma.