New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Saturday ended the Congress’s 24-year grip on the Jalandhar Lok Sabha constituency, winning the crucial seat with a huge margin of 58,000 votes.
AAP’s Sushil Kumar Rinku – a former Congress MLA – defeated Congress’s Karamjit Kaur, the wife of Santokh Singh Chaudhary, whose death necessitated the bypoll.
Chaudhary suffered a heart attack during the party’s Bharat Jodo Yatra in Jalandhar’s Phillaur in January this year.
AAP got 3,02,097 votes, the Congress 2,43,450 votes, the Akali-BSP combine came third with 1,58,354 and the BJP was last with 1,34,706 votes.
Punjab Chief Minister and AAP leader Bhagwant Mann said after the win: “We will put all effort to meet the hopes and expectations of the people. We consider this our responsibility. Hum kis survey mein nahin aate hai… Seedha Sarkar mein aate hain (We don’t feature in any surveys, but come straight to power).”
Congress’s Punjab chief Amrinder Singh Raja Warring conceded defeat around 1 pm, “humbly accepting the people’s mandate” and congratulated Rinku. The party has remained undefeated in the seat since 1999.
The win to the polls held on 10 May is a shot in the arm to the state’s ruling AAP, which faced a drubbing in the Lok Sabha bypoll in Sangrur just three months after it came to power in March 2022.
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