Punjab’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party has managed to retain Ludhiana West assembly constituency in the by-election.
The counting for the bypolls, held on June 19, began at 8am Monday morning. AAP’s Sanjeev Arora defeated his nearest rival Bharat Bhushan Ashu of Congress by a margin of 10,634 votes. Arora was polled 35,144 votes, while Ashu could muster 24,510 votes. Jiwan Gupta of BJP and Parupkar Singh Guman
of SAD stood third and fourth with 20,299 and 8,198 votes respectively.
As the counting progressed, Arora’s victory appeared more certain as the anti-incumbency factor,
if any, did not work as the “opposition” votes were divided into three opposition parties — the Congress, BJP and SAD.
For AAP, which is in power since 2022 in Punjab, victory in bypolls has come as a sigh of relief, especially the party’s debacle in Delhi Assembly elections earlier this year.
