Jalandhar LS bypoll: AAP's vote share climbs to 34%, Cong's vote share dips

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) that emerged victorious in the high-stakes Jalandhar Lok Sabha bypoll in Punjab on Saturday secured a vote share of 34.05 per cent, up from 2.5 per cent in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

AAP's Sushil Rinku defeated his nearest rival, Karamjit Kaur Chaudhary of the Congress, by a margin of 58,691 votes, according to the Election Commission's data.

Rinku, who joined the AAP after quitting the Congress before the bypoll, polled 3,02,279 votes, while Chaudhary secured 2,43,588 votes, according to the data.

Shiromani Akali Dal's (SAD) Sukhwinder Kumar Sukhi, who was backed by the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), finished the poll race at the third spot, while the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Inder Iqbal Singh Atwal was fourth.

Sukhi polled 1,58,445 votes, while Atwal bagged 1,34,800 votes.

With this victory, the AAP wrested the Jalandhar parliamentary constituency from the Congress. The seat with a considerable Dalit presence was considered a bastion of the Congress.

The Congress has five MLAs in the nine Assembly segments falling within the Lok Sabha constituency, while the AAP has four MLAs.

"It was considered a stronghold of the Congress party as we could win only four of the nine Assembly segments during the (AAP's) wave (in the Assembly polls last year)," AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal told reporters in Delhi.

"This time, we have won seven of the nine Assembly segments," he added.

Kejriwal further pointed out that during the Punjab Assembly polls last year, the AAP had secured a 42-per cent vote share but in Jalandhar, it had managed to bag only 28 per cent votes.

The EC figures showed that the AAP secured 34.05 per cent votes in the Jalandhar bypoll as against the 2.5 per cent votes it had got in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

The Congress party's vote share dropped to 27.44 per cent from 37.9 in 2019.

The vote share of the BJP, which fought the bypoll on its own, was 15.19 per cent, while the SAD, which fought the bypoll with the support of the BSP, managed to secure a vote share of 17.85 per cent.

Nineteen candidates contested the bypoll, which recorded a voter turnout of 54.7 per cent. The turnout was well below the 63.04 per cent recorded in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.