Punjab civic polls: From a tie to 1 vote…when losers came pretty close to winning contest

In ward number 8 of Sangrur municipal council, BJP’s Moti Lal and Congress’s Himanshu got 556 votes each. The total votes in this ward are 2,287, while 1,235 were polled on Saturday. It was a tie and to declare the winner, district electoral officer (DEO) used the method of drawing lots and ultimately Congress’s Himanshu was declared winner.

Talking to The Indian Express, Sandeep Rishi, Deputy Commissioner-cum-DEO, Sangrur, said, “Name slips of candidates were put in an opaque box as there was a tie, and by drawing lots, the name of the winner was decided.”

Elections to five municipal corporations — Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Patiala, Amritsar and Phagwara — and 41 municipal councils and nagar panchayats in Punjab took place on Saturday and the results were announced late on Saturday.

Though Moti Lal accepted the verdict, it was heartbreaking for him as he came pretty close to winning the election.

In ward number 48 of Jalandhar Municipal Corporation, AAP-rebel independent candidate Shiv Nath Singh lost to AAP’s Harjinder Singh Ladda by just one vote. Ladda got 1,104 votes, while Nath Singh got 1,103 votes. However, Nath Singh hasn’t accepted the result yet and has plans to challenge it in court as he has alleged the counting process was not fair.

The results of civic polls had a number of other narrow victories which show the cut-throat competition in the elections.

In Bariwala Nagar Panchayat of Muktsar district, there are total 11 wards of which eight were won by the AAP and three by SAD-backed independents. However, five out of these 11 candidates had a narrow win — they won by a thin margin of 15 or less than 15 votes. In ward number 4, AAP’s Satnam Singh defeated independent candidate Baljeet Kaur by seven votes, while AAP’s Ajit Singh won in ward number 5 by just eight votes. Also, Lata Rani of the AAP won in ward number 7 by eight votes defeating Murti Rani (independent candidate). Independent candidate Angrej Kaur and AAP candidate Kewal Krishan from ward numbers 3 and 10, respectively, could win only by a margin of 15 votes each.

“The contest was tight. Six of our candidates contested on party symbol and the rest as independents. While three of the party-backed independents won, two of our independents lost by a whisker,” said Kanwarjit Singh Rozy Barkandi, former SAD MLA, who had campaigned in Bariwala Nagar Panchayat aggressively for the civic polls.

In Sangrur municipal council, another BJP candidate Raminder Kaur lost to AAP’s Salma by just 13 votes from ward number 21. Her nephew Rafi Kumar said, “My aunt got 347 votes, while the AAP candidate got 360 votes. We suspect unfair counting at one booth, but now there is no one to hear us out. The last municipal council polls in Sangrur had happened in 2014 and the BJP had won from this ward at that time.”

BJP’s Amritsar district president Harwinder Singh Sandhu told The Indian Express, “Our strong candidate Meenu Sehgal lost from ward number 62 of Amritsar Municipal Corporation by just 20 votes to Congress’s Sameer Dutta. She was winning but in the end she lost the poll. We suspect unfair counting at one booth. The result of this ward was also declared very late.” However, the party has no plans to challenge the decision now.

There were other results with narrow defeats. Two other BJP candidates lost in Sangrur municipal council by just 27 and 37 votes. There was a major upset in Ludhiana district with AAP’s Sukhchain Bassi (from ward number 61) losing to Congress’s Parminder Kaur Indi by a margin of just 86 votes. Bassi is the wife of Gurpreet Singh Gogi, the AAP MLA from Ludhiana West.

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