Punjab: Congress wins 8 of 13 seats, Capt proves he’s in command

Ruchika M. Khanna
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, May 23

The Congress upped its tally in the Lok Sabha from Punjab, winning eight of the 13 parliamentary seats, up from four in 2014.

Alliance partners SAD and BJP won two seats each and the embattled Aam Aadmi Party was on course of winning Sangrur, where its president Bhagwant Mann is contesting. 

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The state, however, bucked the national trend by giving an overall big win to the Congress, and not voting in favour of the Akali-BJP alliance. The BJP can take solace in the fact that the Modi factor played out well in two of the three seats.

Also, with the party finally emerging from the shadow of the Akali Dal in Punjab, it could well mean a shift in the power balance between the two alliance partners.

SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal won Ferozepur seat by a record margin of 1,97,008 votes. In Bathinda, his wife and Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal won by 21,772 votes.

Union minister and BJP candidate Hardeep Singh Puri lost Amritsar seat to Gurjeet Singh Aujla, sitting Congress MP, by a margin of 99,626 votes.

BJP's gamble to field Sunny Deol from the Gurdaspur constituency finally paid off with the Bollywood actor winning the seat by defeating Congress heavyweight and sitting MP Sunil Jakhar.

Deol, 59, defeated the Punjab Congress chief with a margin of 82,459 votes, the Election Commission said.

After registering a resounding victory, Deol said he would work for the welfare of voters from the border constituency.

"I was confident that people of this constituency love me a lot and ensure my victory (from Gurdaspur Lok Sabha seat)," he said. — With agency inputs