Punjab: Congress leading on 8 seats; SAD, BJP on 2 each, AAP 1
Thursday, 23/05/2019
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/punjab/punjab-congress-leading-on-8-seats-sad-bjp-on-2-each-aap-1/777201.html
Chandigarh : The Congress seems to have upped its tally in the Lok Sabha from Punjab, leading on eight of the 13 parliamentary seats, up from four in 2014.
The Akali-BJP alliance was ahead on two seats each, and the embattled Aam Aadmi Party was leading in Sangrur, where its president Bhagwant Mann is contesting.
The biggest take-away from the massive lead for the BJP on two of the three seats it contested – Gurdaspur and Hoshiarpur – was the pro-Modi sentiment in certain pockets of Punjab. The state, however, bucked the national trend by giving an overall big win to the Congress, and not voting in favour of the Akali-BJP alliance. The BJP can take solace in the fact that the Modi factor played out well in two of the three seats, giving it a massive lead there.
Also, with the party finally emerging from the shadow of the Akali Dal in Punjab, it could well mean a shift in the power balance between the two alliance partners.
The SAD has been able to get a massive lead in Ferozepur, where party president Sukhbir Singh Badal is in the fray. In Bathinda, where his wife and Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal contested, the situation was not very comfortable till afternoon, though her lead was over 10,000.
Even as trends pour in, the leads of the parties in Punjab on seven seats seem difficult to reverse. These are Patiala, Anandpur Sahib, Ludhiana, Faridkot, Khadoor Sahib and Amritsar for Congress; Ferozepur for the Akali Dal; and Gurdaspur and Hoshiarpur for the BJP. There is still a neck-and-neck fight on in Jalandhar (Congress leading) and Bathinda (Akali Dal leading).
