Punjab: 30.93% polling till 1 pm in Jalandhar Lok Sabha bypoll

Jalandhar: A voter turnout of nearly 31 per cent was recorded till 1 pm in the Jalandhar Lok Sabha by-election on Wednesday.

The seat, which fell vacant following the death of Congress MP Santokh Singh Chaudhary due to a cardiac arrest during his party's Bharat Jodo Yatra in January, is witnessing a four-cornered electoral battle.

The AAP, which is the ruling party in the state, the Congress, BJP and Shiromani Akali Dal are vying to outdo each other in the Dalit stronghold.

Voting began at 8 am amid tight security and is set to continue till 6 pm, officials said.

According to the Election Commission's voter turnout app, 30.93 per cent polling was recorded till 1 pm.

Prominent among those who cast their ballot included AAP candidate Sushil Rinku, Congress candidate Karamjit Kaur Chaudhary, MLA Pargat Singh, and AAP MP Balbir Singh Seechewal.

Meanwhile, opposition party leaders accused the AAP of violating the model code of conduct by deploying outsiders at several booths, a charge denied by the ruling party.

Congress candidate Karamjit Kaur Chaudhary, through her election agent, wrote a letter to the chief election commissioner, alleging AAP leaders and workers came from outside the constituency for campaigning and were still present in almost every village and ward.

She wrote that as per the instructions of the Election Commission, the district election administration should ensure that all outsiders leave the constituency immediately as the campaign period was over.

“In fact, it is these outsiders who are manning almost each and every booth and the entire Election Commission machinery has become a mere spectator to these gross violations of the election regulations,” she alleged.

“The ruling AAP is misusing the government machinery and no action is being taken by the returning officer and the assistant returning officers,” she alleged.

Akali leader Pawan Kumar Tinu too alleged that some AAP workers from Attari in Amritsar were deployed at one of the booths in Adampur.

Congress MLA from Shahkot Hardev Singh Laddi Sherowalia alleged AAP's Baba Bakala MLA Dalbir Singh Tong, being an outsider, was in Shahkot, which is part of the Jalandhar parliamentary constituency.

Sherowalia, along with his supporters, even blocked the vehicle of the AAP MLA and called police.

There are 16,21,800 eligible voters, including 8,44,904 males, 7,76,855 females, and 41 third genders.

Nineteen candidates, including four women, are in the fray.

The AAP has fielded former MLA Sushil Rinku, who quit the Congress, while the Congress has shown its faith in Karamjit Kaur, wife of Santokh Chaudhary.

The BJP has fielded Inder Iqbal Singh Atwal, a Dalit Sikh, who quit the Akali Dal to join the saffron party. Atwal is the son of former Punjab Vidhan Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal, who had also joined the BJP.

The SAD has fielded its two-time MLA from the Banga seat Sukhwinder Kumar Sukhi, a doctor. The SAD candidate is backed by its ally Bahujan Samaj Party. The Simranjit Singh Mann-led Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) has fielded Gurjant Singh.

There are 1,972 polling stations in the constituency and 497 of them have been identified as critical. A dedicated women-only polling station has been set up in each of the nine assembly constituencies, which are part of the Jalandhar parliamentary seat, officials said.

The counting of votes will take place on May 13.

Victory in this Lok Sabha bypoll is important for the AAP, which had faced a drubbing in the Sangrur Lok Sabha bypoll, just three months after it came to power in Punjab in March 2022 with a thumping majority.

The Congress is looking to defend its citadel. The Jalandhar Lok Sabha seat is considered to be a traditional stronghold of the Congress and the party has remained undefeated here since 1999.

The stakes are also high for the BJP and the Akali Dal which tasted humiliating defeats in the 2022 Punjab Assembly polls. The two parties were allies in Punjab till the SAD broke ties with the BJP in 2020 over the now-repealed farm laws.