Chandigarh: As Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) almost swept Punjab polls, the Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal founded battalion in the state left some of the big names here red-faced.
Be it Navjot Singh Sidhu, the veteran Prakash Singh Badal, CM Charanjit Singh Channi, or Capt. Amarinder Singh – all have lost their seats to AAP candidates thus marking a significant shift in the regional politics of Delhi.
Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu on Thursday faced an embarrassing defeat in the Amritsar (East) seat of Punjab to the AAP’s Jeewan Jyot Kaur by over 6,000 votes, His party too fared poorly with the projections showing a lead in less than 20 of 117 assembly seats.
Punjab Chief Minister and Congress leader Charanjit Singh Channi has lost from both the seats that he contested – Chamkaur Sahib and Bhadaur in the state assembly elections. While in Chamkaur Sahib, Channi got 50,000 votes, while Aam Aadmi Party’s candidate who has a similar name – Charanjit Singh – got over 54,000 votes.
Punjab Lok Congress Party chief and two-time chief minister Amarinder Singh lost from Patiala Urban by a margin of 19,873 votes to Aam Aadmi Party’s Ajit Pal Singh Kohli.
While Akali Dal leader Sukhbir Singh Badal has lost the elections by a margin of 23,310 votes in the Jalalabad constituency to AAP’s Aadmi Party’s Jagdeep Kamboj, another key SAD leader Parkash Singh Badal has also lost the Lambi constituency by a margin of 11,357 votes against Aam Aadmi Party’s AP’s Gurmeet Singh Khudian.
Meanwhile, AAP’s chief ministerial candidate Bhagwant Mann is all set to become the next chief minister of Punjab.
As AAP wins Punjab, it will be the party’s maiden victory in the state and a vast improvement from its performance in the 2017 elections when it had finished second behind Congress.
Congress went into the polls, battling factionalism and anti-incumbency. The party changed its Chief Minister in September last year even as the party’s new state unit chief Navjot Singh Sidhu hinted about his own Chief Ministerial ambitions.
