Chandigarh: The Congress dealt a body blow to the ruling AAP and the opposition BJP and SAD, winning seven of the 13 Lok Sabha seats in the high-stakes polls in Punjab even as two independents, including jailed radical Sikh preacher Amritpal Singh, registered a surprise victory.
While the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party clinched three seats, the Sukhbir Singh Badal-led Shiromani Akali Dal could win only one seat and the BJP drew a blank in the border state.
The Congress appeared to have bounced back in the state's political landscape after suffering a humiliating defeat at the hands of the AAP in the 2022 Punjab assembly polls.
The prominent winners in this election were Congress' Charanjit Singh Channi, Amrinder Singh Raja Warring, Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, SAD candidate and three-time MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal, and AAP's Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer.
Besides, Amritpal Singh won the Khadoor Sahib seat, defeating Congress party's Kulbir Singh Zira by a margin of 1.97 lakh votes -- highest among the 13 seats in the state.
Another independent candidate Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa, the son of one of the two assassins of former prime minister Indira Gandhi, registered a victory from the Faridkot seat.
Amritpal Singh is the chief of the 'Waris Punjab De' outfit and is currently lodged in Assam's Dibrugarh jail under the National Security Act.
Major upsets in the poll outcome included four-time MP and BJP candidate Preneet Kaur, BJP's Ravneet Singh Bittu, Sushil Rinku, Hans Raj Hans, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, Anita Som Parkash, Parampal Kaur Sidhu, SAD (Amritsar) Simranjit Singh Mann, Congress party's Sukhpal Singh Khaira and SAD's Prem Singh Chandumajra, Daljit Singh Cheema.
Punjab this time saw a multi-cornered contest in all 13 Lok Sabha seats.
The INDIA bloc allies Congress and AAP contested separately while the BJP and Shiromani Akali Dal fought the Lok Sabha polls on their own for the first time since 1996.
Besides major political parties, Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) and the Bahujan Samaj Party had also fielded their candidates.
The election outcome came as a setback to the BJP which even failed to retain its traditional seats -- Gurdaspur and Hoshiarpur.
The Shiromani Akali Dal could win only the Bathinda seat, though party candidate Harsimrat Kaur Badal improved the margin of victory as compared to the 2019 elections.
In 2019, the Congress bagged eight of the 13 Lok Sabha seats. The SAD and the BJP, then fighting as allies, won two seats each. The Aam Aadmi Party got just the Sangrur seat then.
Following the Sangrur and Jalandhar bypolls in 2022 and 2023, the Congress was left with seven seats while the SAD and BJP had two each and AAP and SAD (Amritsar) one each.
Since the counting began at 8 am, the Congress candidates in several seats maintained a lead though there was a close fight in the Ferozepur constituency.
Former Punjab chief minister and Congress candidate Charanjit Singh Channi defeated BJP's Sushil Rinku by a margin of 1.75 lakh votes from the Jalandhar reserve constituency.
SAD's Harsimrat Kaur Badal retained the Bathinda seat as she defeated AAP's Gurmeet Singh Khuddian by a margin of 49,656 votes while Congress party's Sukhjinder Randhawa dealt a blow to the BJP from Gurdaspur by trouncing its nominee Dinesh Babbu by over 82,000 votes.
Punjab Congress chief Warring defeated three-time MP and BJP candidate Bittu by a margin of 20,942 votes. Congress' Dharamvira Gandhi trounced four-time MP and BJP candidate Preneet Kaur from her pocket borough of Patiala.
One of the major highlights of the election was AAP's Gurmeet Singh Hayer wresting the Sangrur seat from SAD (Amritsar) candidate Simranjit Singh Mann by a margin of 1.72 lakh votes.
Congress candidate and sitting MP Gurjeet Singh Aujla retained the Amritsar seat by defeating AAP's Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal.
In Faridkot, independent candidate Sarabjit Singh Khalsa defeated Punjabi actor and AAP candidate Karamjit Singh Anmol.
While the election was being seen as a litmus test for Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann who steered the AAP's poll campaign almost single-handedly, the stakes were also high for the Congress as it was eager to register a convincing win.
The election also posed a challenge for SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal who was looking to gain lost political ground in the state.
The vote share of the Congress was 26.30 per cent while the AAP's vote share was 26.02 per cent. The BJP and SAD's respective vote share were 18.56 per cent and 13.42 per cent.
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