In a boost to the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ahead of 2024 general elections,  the Arvind Kejriwal-led party on Saturday wrested the  Jalandhar Lok Sabha seat from the Congress with the party candidate Sushil Kumar Rinku winning a margin of 58,691 votes.

By polling over 34 per cent of the total votes, Rinku – a former Congress legislator who joined AAP days ahead of the by-election – maintained lead over his nearest rival and the Congress candidate Karamjit Kaur Chaudhary from the very first round of counting.  The Congress got 27.4 per cent votes.

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The Shiromani Akali Dal-Bahujan Samaj Party (SAD-BSP) candidate Sukhwinder Kumar Sukhi remained at number four position with 17.9 per cent of votes while Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Inder Iqbal Singh Atwal, who polled about 15.2 per cent of votes, was at number four position.

A Congress stronghold, Jalandhar Lok Sabha seat, remained with the grand old party since 1999. This reserved seat fell vacant after Congress’ Member of Parliament (MP), Santokh Singh Chaudhary (76), died of a heart attack during Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra in Punjab this January.

In the 2022 Assembly polls, Congress had won five of the nine Assembly segments in the Jalandhar Lok Sabha seat while the AAP won the remaining four. In the bypoll results today, the AAP took lead in seven segments while the BJP took lead in the remaining two – Jalandhar North and Jalandhar Central.

Having suffered an embarrassing defeat in the bypoll for Sangrur Lok Sabha seat – vacated by the chief minister who had won it in 2014 and 2019 – to Simranjit Singh Mann of Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) barely three months after AAP swept the February 2022 Punjab Assembly polls by winning 92 of the 117 seats. This had raised a question mark on AAP’s popularity and Mann’s leadership.

No wonder this bypoll was a matter of prestige for the ruling AAP as a defeat would have dented the party’s claim to good governance and new brand of politics.  The resounding victory, that too in the Congress stronghold, has given AAP in general and Mann in particular a much-needed boost in the run-up to 2014 Lok Sabha elections due next year.

Addressing a press conference in Delhi along with the Punjab chief minister, AAP chief and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal described the bypoll result as a people’s stamp on the one year of the Bhagwant Mann Government in Punjab.

Mann, in turn, said the verdict is a positive stamp on 14 months of the AAP government. “We were seeking votes for free power, school, Aam Aadmi Clinics and infrastructure.  It’s great that people like positive politics. All parties were together against AAP in this bypoll. But people have rejected them all and given their stamp to the work culture and honesty of the AAP government,” he said.