Congress Party candidate Preneet Kaur, wife of former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, has won the Patiala Urban by-election in the state of Punjab.
She defeated her rival Bhagwan Dass Juneja of the ruling Akali Dal by by a margin of 23,282 votes. She polled 52,967 votes, SAD nominee Bhagwan Dass Juneja 29,685 and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate Harjit S Adaltiwala 5,724. The seat fell vacant after the former CM got elected to the Lok Sabha from Amritsar.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which won the Patiala Lok Sabha seat May this year, lost its security deposit on the Patiala seat.
Preneet Kaur, former Union minister, had lost the Lok Sabha election to AAP’s Dharamvira Gandhi from Patiala.
The by-election in Talwandi Sabo was a contest between Congress’ Harminder Singh Jassi, SAD’s Jeet Mohinder Singh Sidhu and AAP’s Baljinder Kaur, while Balkar Singh, who was initially declared as AAP candidate, contested as Independent.
Shiromani Akali Dal’s candidate Jeet Mohinder Singh, who had quit the Congress earlier this year, won the election by over 46,600 votes. He defeated his nearest rival Harminder Singh Jassi of the Congress.
The Times of India reported: “Three months after its spectacular showing in Lok Sabha polls, the BJP on Monday received a jolt in assembly byelections suffering a 4-6 defeat at the hands of the RJD-JD(U)-Congress alliance in Bihar and yielding two strongholds to Congress in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. … Out of the 18 seats in four states for which bypolls were held on August 21, Congress and its allies won 10 while seven went to BJP and one to its ally SAD.”