JALANDHAR
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has retained the Jalandhar West assembly seat as its candidate Mohinder Bhagat won by defeating his nearest rival and BJP nominee Sheetal Angural by a margin of more than 37,000 votes,
Jalandhar Deputy Commissioner and District Election Officer Dr Himanshu Aggarwal said Bhagat polled 55,246 votes, Angural secured 17,921. Congress nominee Surinder Kaur, who was in the third spot, got 16,757 votes.
SAD candidate Surjit Kaur got 1,242 votes while BSP candidate Binder Kumar 734.
The by-poll was necessitated after the seat felt vacant following the resignation of Angular as the AAP legislator. He joined the BJP in March.
The AAP, which polled just 15000 votes a month back from this segment in the Lok Sabha elections, made a huge comeback decimating all other candidates.
The shift of Bhagat to AAP from the BJP has helped him finally make it to the Vidhan Sabha, maybe for less than three years. He had contested twice from the BJP on this seat in 2017 and 2022 but had lost both.
The stepping down of Angural as MLA and shifting to the BJP, however, proved suicidal for him.
The Congress showed a poor performance falling far low on the third position. The same area voters had given as many as 44000 votes to Congress' Charanjit Channi in the June 1, Lok Sabha poll.