Jakhar wins Gurdaspur LS bypoll by 1.9L votes
GURDASPUR: Maintaining its winning streak in Punjab seven months after returning to power in the state, the Congress notched up a big victory in the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha by-election on Sunday as its candidate Sunil Jakhar defeated his BJP rival by nearly two lakh votes, the highest ever in the parliamentary seat’s history.
An ecstatic Navjot Singh Sidhu said, “We have sent a beautiful Diwali gift packed with red ribbon to our (Congress) would-be president Rahul Gandhi because it sets the tone... It will be a shot in the arm for the Congress.”
Jakhar polled 4,99,752 votes, while BJP’s Swaran Singh Salaria got 3,65,033 votes. Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate Maj Gen Suresh Khajuria (retd) polled only 23,579 votes and lost his deposit.
Jakhar established his lead from the very beginning of the counting of votes and kept at it in all the nine assembly segments of Gurdaspur parliamentary constituency, where a bypoll was necessitated after the demise of actor Vinod Khanna, who contested five elections from Gurdaspur as BJP candidate and won four of them.
Jakhar described the victory as a referendum on the Narendra Modi government at the Centre.
“The verdict is against Goods and Service Tax (GST) and other policies of the BJP. Today, even the traditional vote bank of the BJP has left it. They either didn’t turn up to vote or voted for the Congress. This victory is the beginning of the downfall of BJP and countdown to 2019 parliamentary polls,” he added.
Both SAD-BJP and AAP had fought the election on the “failure” of Congress to implement its lofty poll promises and pitching an “outsider” in Gurdaspur — Jakhar hails from Abohar in Malwa belt.
However, SAD-BJP remained on the backfoot after rape charges against former Akali strongman of the area, Sucha Singh Langah, and an old rape complaint against Salaria himself.
The AAP conceded defeat a day before the verdict by dismantling its units in Gurdaspur and Pathankot districts. Chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh saw the result as “major step in the revival of the Congress”.
“The #Gurdaspur byelection marks another major step in the revival of @INCIndia, it’s clear that party is on upswing ahead of 2019 polls,” he tweeted.
The BJP must read the writing on the wall now. People have rejected the BJP and also shown mirror to (their ally) the Akalis SUNIL JAKHAR, Cong