Ladi has the last laugh as SAD loses Shahkot
JALANDHAR :The ruling Congress on Thursday wrested the Shahkot assembly seat by handing out a crushing defeat to the Shiromani Akali Dal with party candidate Hardev Singh Ladi Sherowali trouncing rival SAD’S Naib Singh Kohar by 38,802 votes.
The performance of the main opposition Aam Aadmi Party was dismal as its candidate Rattan Singh Kakkar Kalan manage to secure just 1,900 votes. The AAP had given a tough fight to the SAD and the Congress in Shahkot by getting 41,010 votes in 2017 assembly polls.
With this resounding victory, the Congress strength in the 117member House will reach 78, a two-thirds majority. Ladi secured 82,747 votes while Kohar got 43,945, an official spokesman of the election office said. Shahkot was considered an Akali Dal pocket-borough from where late Ajit Singh Kohar was elected five-times in a row.
The contest was being seen as a test of the popularity of the 14-month-old Congress government in the state. Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh hailed the victory as a “vindication of the government’s peoplecentric policies”. The Congress win came amid a series of allegations and a case of illegal sand mining against Ladi.
The SAD leadership, led by party president Sukhbir Singh Badal and former minister Bikram Singh Majithia, raked up the issue during campaigning.
Kohar left the centre while counting was midway alleging that the EVMS were “rigged” and booths were captured. Kakkar Kalan, who also exited the centre while counting was underway, blamed the party’s 2017 assembly election candidate Dr Amarjit Singh Thind, who recently joined SAD, for this defeat.
Local bodies minister Navjot Singh Sidhu and Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar visited the counting centre to congratulate Ladi. NEWDELHI: India’s economy accelerated to 7.7% in the three months ended March 31, the fastest pace in seven quarters, signalling a turnaround that could augur well for the Narendra Modi government facing re-election next year.
The latest data indicates that the economy is also clawing back to its trend growth prior to the invalidation of high-value currencies in November 2016 that led to gross domestic product (GDP) growth slumping to a three-year low of 5.7% in the June quarter of 2017. GDP growth for the year ended 31 March at 6.7% was a tad higher than previously estimated by the Central Statistics Office but still slower than the 7.1% growth recorded in the previous year.
The turnaround in the economy was led by robust agriculture (4.5%) and manufacturing growth (9.1%) as well as doubledigit growth in construction activities (11.5%) in the March quarter.
However, services sectors such as trade, hotels, transport (6.8%) and financial services (5%) decelerated from their levels in the third quarter, signalling a lingering impact from disruptions caused by hasty implementation of the goods and services tax (GST) as well as the state of the banking sector. The economy, however, got a boost from higher government spending (13.3%) in the March quarter.