Congress ends up with 77 seats as all Punjab results declared

Reviving itself in the state after a decade, the Congress swept the Punjab assembly elections on Saturday, winning 77 seats in the 117-member assembly.

Results of all 117 assembly seats and the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat bypoll were declared by the Election Commission by Saturday evening.

The almost two-thirds majority for the Congress belied the exit poll predictions that claimed a tough fight and even a hung house in the state.

The Congress also won the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat by-election by a big margin of nearly two lakh votes. The Congress winner here was youth leader Gurjeet Singh Aujla.

The victory for the Congress came on a day when Captain Amarinder Singh, who led the party in the state, turned 75 years old on Saturday.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which was the new entrant on Punjab's political space, won 20 seats on its own. Its ally, Lok Insaaf Party, won two seats.

The AAP has emerged as the single largest party after the Congress.

The Shiromani Akali Dal, which ruled Punjab for 10 years with alliance partner Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), finished third with 15 seats. The BJP won just three seats.

The Congress finished with a vote percentage of 38.5 per cent; the Akalis got 25.2 per cent, the AAP got 23.7 per cent and the BJP got 5.4 per cent votes. The combined tally of the Akali Dal and the BJP came to 30.6 per cent.

Prominent winners included Amarinder Singh and cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu from the Congress, Parkash Singh Badal and Sukhbir Singh Badal from the Akali Dal and H.S. Phoolka from the AAP.

Outgoing Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal said that he will submit his resignation to Governor V.P. Singh Badnore on Sunday.

The new Congress government is likely to be sworn in next week.

--IANS

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