Punjab Chief Minister and Congress leader Charanjit Singh Channi on Thursday lost the state Assembly elections from both Chamkaur Sahib and Bhadaur seats that he contested from.
In Chamkaur Sahib, Aam Aadmi Party candidate Charanjit Singh won by 6,373 votes against the Punjab chief minister. In the second seat, the Aam Aadmi Party candidate Labh Singh Ugoke won by a margin of 36,964 votes.
The Arvind Kejriwal led-Aam Aadmi Party was heading for a clean sweep in Punjab. By 2.30 pm on Thursday, the party won 14 seats and was leading in 78 in the 117-seat Punjab Assembly. It had crossed the halfway mark of 59 during the early hours of the day.
Former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh also lost Patiala Urban constituency, his family bastion, to Aam Aadmi Party candidate Ajit Pal Singh by a margin of over 13,000 votes.
AAP’s ‘pad woman’ defeats Navjot Sidhu, Bikram Singh Majithia
Meanwhile, voters in the Amritsar East constituency snubbed both high-profile candidates, Congress’ state unit chief Navjot Singh Sidhu and Akali Dal leader Bikram Singh Majithia.
Aam Aadmi Party candidate Jeevan Jyot Kaur bagged the seat with 39,679 votes. Sidhu finished second with 32,929 votes, while Majithia secured 25,188 votes, according to data from the Election Commission website.
The Amritsar East constituency was one of the most closely watched contests in Punjab after the Akali Dal fielded Majithia, a former minister in the state against Sidhu. Months ahead of the elections, Majithia had been booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act on December 20. He had surrendered before a Mohali court in February.
The Aam Aadmi Party’s winning candidate Jeevan Jyot Kaur is known as Amritsar’s “pad woman” due to her work in the field of promoting menstrual hygiene, according to The Quint. She is the chairperson of non-government organisation Sri Hemkunt Education Society, or SHE society, in Amritsar.
Badals lose their seats
Shiromani Akali Dal patriarch Parkash Singh Badal and his son Sukhbir Singh Badal lost the seats they contested to candidates of Aam Aadmi Party.
Parkash Singh Badal, who contested from his traditional seat of Lambi in Muktsar district, lost to the Aam Aadmi Party’s Gurmeet Singh Khudian by 11,396 votes, according to the data available on the Election Commission’s website.
Parkash Singh Badal, 94, has been the chief minister of Punjab on five occasions.
Sukhbir Singh Badal lost the Jalalabad constituency seat to Jagdeep Kamboj of the Aam Aadmi Party by 30,930 votes. Sukhbir Singh Badal was elected chief minister in 2012.
In September 2020, the Shiromani Akali Dal snapped its 24-year-old alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party over the three controversial farm laws. It later allied with the Bahujan Samaj Party.
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