Faridkot Voter turnout 60.7%: Assassin Beant Singh’s son may eat into AAP, SAD votes

Balwant Garg

Faridkot, June 1

Located in the heart of Malwa, the reserved constituenFaridkot is throwing up an interesting contest withSarabjit Singh Khalsa, son of late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassin Beant Singh, likely to divide the votes polled in favour of AAP candidate Karamjit Singh Anmol and SAD candidate Rajwinder Singh Dharamkot.

Contesting the poll as an Independent candidate, Khalsa seems to have got a good response, especially in the rural areas of the state. If he eats more into SAD votes, AAP wins and vice versa. He, however, does not seem to have found much favour with voters in the urban segments of this constituency.

Nearly 9 lakh people had voted in Faridkot till 5 pm.

Khalsa is riding the crest of a sympathy wave, citing the martyrdom of his father Beant Singh and mysterious ‘killing’ of his mother Bimal Kaur Khalsa. It is being said that many Sikh voters in rural areas have shifted from both AAP and SAD to Khalsa.

But Anmol said Khalsa had a social media-galvanised campaign, but what really counted was the real work on the ground.

While Dharamkot said his party strongly believed in Hindu-Sikh unity and no moderate Sikh in Punjab would like to go with radicals for the sake of peace in the state.