AAP Defeats INDIA Bloc Ally Congress 3-1 In Punjab Bypolls

Last Updated:November 23, 2024, 16:47 IST

AAP won the Chabbewal, Gidderbaha, and Dera Baba Nanak assembly seats for the first time but lost the Barnala seat that it won in the 2017 and 2022 elections

AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal and Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann. (File pic/News18)

Punjab’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Saturday added three more assembly seats to its kitty as it won in Chabbewal, Gidderbaha, and Dera Baba Nanak for the first time in by-elections. However, it lost the Barnala seat that it won in the 2017 and 2022 elections.

AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal posted on social media site X that people had once again trusted the party’s ideology. In a post in Hindi, he thanked the people of Punjab and congratulated everyone.

‘3 cheers’ for AAP

Four assembly constituencies in Punjab went for bypolls on November 20 after the incumbent MLAs were elected to the Lok Sabha in June. As the results were declared on Saturday, the party bagged three of these seats that it failed to win even when it witnessed a massive victory in 2022.

The 117-member Punjab assembly has 113 MLAs as of now, including 91 from AAP and 15 from Congress. Now AAP’s tally will increase by three and Congress’s by one.

In Chabbewal, AAP’s Ishank Kumar won by a margin of 28,690 votes against the Congress. Congress’s Ranjit Kumar was in second place with 23,214 votes, while Kumar bagged 51,904.

In 2017 and 2022, Ishank Kumar’s father, Raj Kumar, won the seat as a Congress candidate. In March 2024, he resigned from the Congress and the assembly. He later joined AAP and fought and won the Lok Sabha election.

In Dera Baba Nanak, AAP candidate Gurdeep Singh Randhawa secured 59,104 votes against Congress’s Jatinder Kaur Randhawa. The Congress lost by close to 5,700 votes as it got 53,405 votes.

In Gidderbaha, AAP’s Hardeep Singh Dimpy Dhillon won by a margin of 21,969 votes against Congress leader Amrita Warring. The wife of Punjab Congress chief Amrinder Singh Raja Warring secured 49,675 votes against 71,644 bagged by Dhillon.

AAP ‘burnt’ in Barnala by rebel?

Two-time AAP MLA Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer was elected to the Lok Sabha in June, vacating the seat. The bypolls were announced, and the party trusted Harinder Singh Dhaliwal, considered close to Hayer, rather than Gurdeep Singh Bathh, who was the district president. He quit the party and fought as an independent candidate. His candidature may have cost AAP the seat, numbers suggest.

Congress leader Kuldeep Singh Dhillon won the seat with 28,254 votes, while AAP’s Dhaliwal was second with 26,097—a margin of 2,157 votes. Bathh was fourth with 16,899 votes. The BJP stood in third place on the seat. Congress leader Dhillon was an MLA from the seat in 2007 and 2012.

AAP, which first fought the Punjab polls in 2017, had held the Barnala seat since then. In 2017, AAP got only 20 seats in the state, including Barnala. In 2022, the party swept the elections in the state by securing 92 seats.

While the victory margin of AAP in 2017 on the Barnala seat was around 2,450 votes, in 2022, it won by a margin of more than 37,620 votes.

AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal and Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Singh Mann went to the seat to address jansabhas (public meetings) and campaign for the bypolls.

News elections AAP Defeats INDIA Bloc Ally Congress 3-1 In Punjab Bypolls