Punjab's high-stake Gidderbaha seat sees highest voter turnout of 79 pc

Chandigarh, Nov 20 (IANS): Amid minor skirmishes, the bypoll for four Assembly seats in the AAP-ruled Punjab on Wednesday ended peacefully with the Gidderbaha seat, where the stakes were high for all the three major parties -- the BJP, the Congress, besides the ruling AAP, seeing the highest voter turnout of 78.1 per cent, an hour before formal closing of voting.

In the other three seats, Barnala recorded 52.7 per cent polling, Dera Baba Nanak 59.8 per cent, and Chabbewal (reserved seat) saw 48.01 per cent.

In total, the four seats saw 59.67 per cent till 5 pm.

Election officials said the overall poll percentage would increase as the closure of voting was 6 p.m.

At Dera Pathana village in the Dera Baba Nanak segment, a clash broke out between AAP and Congress supporters.

Gurdaspur MP Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, who is the husband of Congress nominee Jatinder Kaur, alleged that some "outsiders" at the behest of the AAP thrashed his party worker in the village and also accused the police of supporting the assaulters.

The four Assembly seats, which are witnessing a triangular contest, saw high-pitched and aggressive campaigning among the state's ruling AAP, the main opposition Congress, and the BJP. A total of 45 candidates, including three women, are in the fray for the bypolls in which 6.96 lakh voters were eligible to exercise their franchise at 831 polling stations.

The counting of votes will be on November 23.

The four Assembly seats -- three represented by the Congress and one by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) -- fell vacant after MLAs from these constituencies were elected in this year’s Lok Sabha polls.

Amrinder Singh Raja Warring, the Congress legislator from the politically significant seat Gidderbaha, was elected from the Ludhiana Parliamentary seat, while Raj Kumar Chabbewal, a Congress MLA who later switched loyalties to AAP, became MP from the Hoshiarpur Lok Sabha seat. Randhawa, who was a Congress legislator from the Dera Baba Nanak seat, was elected from the Gurdaspur parliamentary seat, while Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer, the AAP legislator from Barnala, was elected as MP from the Sangrur Lok Sabha seat.

The Congress fielded Warring's wife Amrita Warring from Gidderbaha, Randhawa's wife Jatinder Kaur from Dera Baba Nanak, Ranjit Kumar from Chabbewal, and Kuldeep Singh Dhillon from Barnala.

The fight in Gidderbaha is triangular with BJP candidate Manpreet Singh Badal, a five-time lawmaker and two-time finance minister, posing a challenge to Akali Dal’s turncoat and AAP’s Hardeep Singh Dimpy Dhillon and Congress’ Amrita Warring.

The Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) has fielded Sukhraj Singh.

Former Shiromani Akali Dal leader from Gidderbaha, Dhillon, once a close aide of Sukhbir Badal, switched loyalties in August, saying his decision to join the ruling party is in the larger interest of the constituency that is "struggling for development".

This seat in Muktsar district was once considered a stronghold of the Akalis, with Parkash Singh Badal representing it for five consecutive terms -- 1969, 1972, 1977, 1980 and 1985, before he handed over the political baton to his nephew Manpreet Badal in 1995.

In Dera Baba Nanak, besides Congress’ candidate Jatinder Kaur, AAP’s nominee in the fray is Gurdeep Singh Randhawa and BJP’s Ravikaran Singh Kahlon. From Chabbewal, AAP candidate Ishank Kumar, son of AAP MP Raj Kumar Chabbewal, has been pitted against Congress’ Ranjit Kumar and BJP’s Sohan Singh Thandal, another Akali Dal turncoat who had won this seat in the 2012 Assembly elections but lost in 2017 and 2022.

The Assembly has a strength of 117 members, of which the ruling party AAP has 90 members, while the Opposition Congress has 13 seats, the Shiromani Akali Dal three seats, the BJP two, and the BSP one. There are also three Independent members.

In 2022, the AAP formed the government after winning 92 seats, with Bhagwant Mann becoming the Chief Minister.