23.04% of voters cast ballots in the Jalandhar West assembly byelection as of Wednesday morning, 11 a.m.
The fate of 15 contenders in the race will be determined by an estimated 1.71 lakh voters; voting will take place from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m, and on July 13th is when the results will be announced.
In the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections, Sheetal Angural, who is now contesting as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate, resigned as an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA, making a byelection necessary.
With his father, BJP veteran Chunni Lal Bhagat, for blessings, AAP candidate Mohinder Bhagat cast his ballot.
Voting was place at their respective voting places for BSP candidate Bhinder Kumar Lakha, BJP candidate Angural, and Congress candidate Surinder Kaur.
With the exception of a few complaints of AAP employees from other regions of the state driving about uninhibited, the polling process remained quiet.
Angural brought them to the attention of the district administration and pushed the authorities to take action against outsiders who disobeyed the model code of conduct.
The Jalandhar West segment recorded 67.31% voter turnout in the 2022 assembly elections, but 64.45% in the most recent Lok Sabha elections.
Of the 181 voting places the district administration has set up, 51 are extremely sensitive and have complex security setups in place.
To maintain law and order, 1,055 security personnel—700 Punjab police officers and three companies of the Border Security Force (BSF)—have been sent in.
Bhagwant Mann, the chief minister of Punjab, will be put to the test in the Jalandhar West by poll, particularly in light of the disastrous Lok Sabha election where the AAP only managed to win three of the state’s thirteen seats.
On the other hand, the Congress is hoping for icing on the cake after its nominee, former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi, won by 1.75 lakh votes to win the Lok Sabha seat in Jalandhar. Even yet, Channi might only achieve a 1,557-vote edge in the Jalandhar West sector, making things difficult for the Congress.
A victory here will vindicate BJP’s Angural, who decided to break with the AAP and join the saffron party ahead of the parliamentary elections. Furthermore, the BJP hopes to hold onto its former stronghold, from which its senior leader Chunni Lal Bhagat emerged victorious in three separate assembly elections—in 1997, 2007 and 2012.
The Congress has won the seat twice in the last five elections, in 2002 and 2017, while the BJP has done so in 2007 and 2012. In 2022, the AAP became victorious when its candidate, Angural, defeated Congressman Rinku by a margin of 4,253 votes.
